Marta María Pérez Bravo

For example, a large part of her work also consists of self-portraits that are intended to "demystify" motherhood. Her challenges in childbirth served as the inspiration for her series Para concebir (To conceive) (1985) and Memories of Our Baby (1990). These series attempt to demystify motherhood by showing her body in ways that are intended to challenge the worshiping of sensual beauty. One method she uses to accomplish this is to depict her body in circumstances of physical violence. Her practice of Santeria, which emphasizes duality, allows for the existence of this contextualized violence and spirituality in the same image, while also transforming Pérez Bravo’s body into a sacred site in and of itself. Her photographs explore what it means to be female contrary to patriarchal stereotypes.

Pérez Bravo initially studied painting in Havana at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts (1979) and the Instituto Superior de Arte (1984). Although she studied painting while at the Instituto Superior de Arte, she became interested in photography while working on her senior thesis at the latter, and has primarily used this medium since. She lived in Havana until 1995 when she moved to Monterrey, Mexico, with her family, where she currently resides and works. Pérez Bravo was part of a generation of Cuban artists born immediately following the Cuban Revolution and was one of those who went into exile following the collapse of the Special Period at the end of the 1980s.

Marta María Pérez Bravo (born 1959) is a Cuban artist who is best known for her black-and-white self-portraiture, in which she often uses her own body as the central subject-object to express her own belief in - and practice of - Afro-Cuban religions, particularly Santeria and Palo Monte. Much of her art is informed by this practice, and engages with the themes of ritual, motherhood and femininity, expressed through the highly stylized posing of her body, which is placed in relation to personally and ritually significant objects in her self-portraits.