chronology

1960
Born in Havana, Cuba.
On August 18, family leaves Cuba for Miami.

1964
Family moves to Puerto Rico.

1968-76
In 1968 starts working with a Polaroid Swinger camera that her parents give her as a present. Her mother gives her an old Twin-Lens Rolleiflex that she brought out of Cuba. Parents encouraged their daughter interest in photography. Becomes fascinated with the laboratory aspect of photography and asked her parents to build her a darkroom at home. Wins the Photography Award 1973-74 at the First Festival Of The Arts at Colegio Puertorriqueño de Niñas. From 1974-78 attends Academia María Reina, where she becomes Photography Editor of her yearbook.

1977
Has her first photography exhibition titled “Reflejos” at the Galería Aboy, San Juan, Puerto Rico. This exhibition marks the beginning of her full time dedication to photography. Decides, with the help of her Spanish Literature teacher, Isabel Durand, to become an artist.

1978-82
Attends the Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she studies under Joan Redmond, Ron Walker, Eileen Berger, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, among others. Ray Metzker is the Chairperson of the Photography Department at this time and his work influenced her. Experiments with photographs that involve music, 16mm film, family images and printmaking techniques. Comes across Barbara Blondeau’s work. Starts using Rubylith film to create negatives. Breaks completely with traditional photography. Creates “The Concert Book” and her first series of “Fragment Pieces” and “The Map Series”. Receives a Student Project Grant to work together with fellow student Joseph Oppecker on a book of language and images.

1982
Awarded a Smith Scholarship for Graduate work at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Studies under Barbara Crane, Joyce Neimanas, Robert Loescher and Alex Sweetman, among others. Exhibits in December at the invitation of José Gómez Sicre in a two-person show her series “Fragment Pieces” and “The Map Series” at the Museum of Modern Art Of Latin America at the Organization Of American States, Washington, DC.

1983
First solo museum exhibition, “María Martínez-Cañas: Photographs”, is held in January at the Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the summer, travels with her professor Robert Loescher to Spain and Portugal for the first time as part of a course in Spanish and Portuguese Architecture from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Stayed behind after the course ends and travels widely in Europe. Exhibited for the first time at the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers [AIPAD] fair with the Schweyer-Galdo Galleries and meets Lucien Clergue. 

1984
Lucien Clergue invites her to exhibit at the 15th Rencontres Internationales De La Photographie in Arles, France. “María Martínez-Cañas: Compositions Photo-Graphiques” opens on July at the Espace Sainte-Luce in Arles, France. Exhibits the series “Fragments Pieces #2” and “Fragments Pieces #3.

Experimented with video, performance and music compositions. Creates her video “Un Problema de Identidád [A Problem Of Identity]”.

1985
Receives a Fulbright-Hays grant through the Institute of International Education and the Spanish Government. Moved to Spain.

1986
Lives in Madrid. Works in a studio in the Visual Arts Department at the Complutense University of Madrid. Traveled widely in Spain doing research at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, Archivo de Indias in Seville and the Archivo de Simancas in Valladolid, among others. Creates her first negatives based on Cuban maps. Returned to the United States on July. Moves to Miami on September 1st.

1987 - back to top
Prints the negatives created in Spain. Receives an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Division of Cultural Affairs, Florida Department of States.

1988
Receives a Photography Fellowship from the National Endowment For The Arts, Washington, DC and a Cintas Fellowship in Photography from the Institute of International Education, New York. Creates the work “Punta Arriba y Punta Abajo” which takes her five months to complete. Starts teaching at the Visual Arts Department of the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.

1989
Creates her first works based on Wifredo Lams’s work under the subtitled “Totems Blancos”. Commissioned to create a work in homage of Vincent van Gogh for the Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France, for which she creates “For Vincent (Portrait Of Dr. Felix Rey)”.

1990
Serves as artist-in-residence at Light Work, Syracuse, New York. Creates and prints there her first four mural works: “Ciudad Jungla”, “Paisaje Con Ruinas”, “Tres Totems” and “Hablando Para Ti”. Starts her “Totem Negro” series. Travels to France for her one-person exhibition “María Martínez-Cañas: Documents de Memoire” at the Centre Culturel de Courbevoie, Courbevoie, France.

1991
A major solo-exhibition of her works from 1980 to 1990, “Encounters 1: María Martínez-Cañas”, is organized by Terence Pitts, at the Center For Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. One of her Rubylith negatives, “Coronación”, is shown for the first time. Afterwards part of the exhibition travels to the San Francisco Camerawork, under the title “Historia Distante”. Creates her “Quince Sellos Cubanos [Fifteen Cuban Stamps]” portfolio with the assistance of former students Nicole David and Suzanne Abramson.

1992 - back to top
Solo exhibitions at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York and the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Awarded the Visual and Media Artists Fellowship from the South Florida Cultural Consortium. Creates the last seven images in the “Totem Negros” series.

1993
Solo exhibition at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, “Accounts Southeast: María Martínez-Cañas”.          

1994
Receives commission from Metro-Dade Art In Public Places, Miami, Florida, for work at Concourse D at Miami International Airport. Traveled to Tucson, Arizona, to learn the Platinum process with Keith Schreiber. Creates her first Platinum/Palladium pieces on antique manuscript paper, a series of fifteen unique images titled “Imagen Escrita”.

1995
Exhibits for the first time the entire seventeen images in the series “Totems Negros” at the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida. Organized  and curated by Alison Nordström, the museum published , in conjunction with the exhibition, the book “Black Totems: Photographs By María Martínez-Cañas”. Exhibits in Chicago her series “Imagen Escrita’. A catalog with an essay by Vicky Goldberg is published in conjunction with the exhibition.  Is selected by Andy Grundberg director and curator at the Friends Of Photography, San Francisco, California, to participate in the major traveling exhibition “Points Of Entry”, where she exhibits her entire “Quince Sellos Cubanos” portfolio.

1996
In January, “Años Continuos”, Martínez-Cañas’s commission for Miami-Dade Art In Public Places at Concourse D of Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida, is unveiled. Serves as artist-in-residence at Renaissance Press, Hinsdale, New Hampshire, where she creates her “Páginas De Viaje” portfolio, which consists of five 20” x 20” photogravures. Breaks with the subject of Cuba, as inspiration for her work. Traveled to England to photograph Stonehenge for her “Piedras [Stones]” series. Experiments with onion skins and Pinhole camera images. Starts teaching at the Visual Arts Department of the New World School of The Arts, Miami, Florida.

1997
Travels to Rovaniemi, Finland, to participate in “Dislocations/Siirtymia: The Fifth International Triennial of Photography” where she exhibits her series “Imagen Escrita” and “Páginas De Viaje”. Traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, with her Pinhole camera. Completes the series “Piedras [Stones]”.

1998 - back to top
Experimented with stains, watercolors and dyes. Breaks with the use of the Rubylith film. Creates her photograms “Prima Materia”, “Garden” and “Metamorfosis” series after the death of a dear friend. Makes her “Flight [Hospital Bed]” series in photo linen, her first photographs utilizing her body as part of the image.

1999
“Años Continuos: An Installation By María Martínez-Cañas” opens at the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida, marking the first time the original work made out of approximately 350-400 images and measuring 10’ x 10’ is exhibited. Makes her first experiments with the Diazo process, creating the series “Traces of Nature”. Moves her studio temporarily to a cigar-factory in Little Havana, Miami, Florida, and creates her first large-scale Diazo photograms with the assistance of former students Nicole David and Adria Marquez.

2000
Selected by the State of Florida as the first woman artist to represent the state at the From The States Program at the National Museum of Women In The Arts, Washington, DC. Travels in August to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to exhibit her series ‘Naturaleza Perdida” and “Traces Of Nature”. The catalog ‘Shadow Gardens’ with an essay by Edward Sullivan is published in conjunction with the exhibition. In November, one of her works from the “Traces of Nature” series is selected by the Art In Embassies Program of the United States Government to be exhibited at the residence of the Principal Officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba.

2001
Experimented for the first time with computer-generated images for her series “Hortus”. Starts working again with Rubylith film. In December creates a site-expecific installation at The Moore Building in Miami, Florida, titled “Impermanent Evidence” for the exhibition ‘Humid’, curated by Dominic Molon, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Experiments with saliva and submerging the images in water. Creates her video “Blue Hand” with the generous support of Carlos and Rosa De La Cruz.

2002
Experiments with creating an image on tapestry through a private commission for a residence in Jihad, Saudi Arabia. Project never reaches completion due to conflict between United States and Iraq. Creates computer-generated images for her series “Naturalia”, layering botanical prints with 3 dimensional objects in the scanner. Appointed by the Governor of Florida to served as a member of the Florida Commemorative Quarter Committee to select the design for the Florida quarter dollar.

2003
Starts her series “Viruses + Bacteria” which are unique digitized cibachrome prints created with the use of found x-rays, anatomical, and medical images combined with her own saliva images created in the scanner and transferred into digitized files. The series takes eleven months to complete. Starts a new series of images dealing with forensic crime investigations. Awarded a Public Art Commission for Island Gardens project in Watson Island, Miami, Florida

2004
Selected by Kean University in Union City, New Jersey, to create two outdoors pieces for their September 11th Memorial [project does not reaches completion]. This commission would take her to Munich, Germany, to work at the Franz Mayer Glass and mosaic factory. While testing the glass images for the works, she meets Kim Brown, a conceptual artist from Alaska. This meeting would start a new collaborative body of work titled 'Dustograms' that would combined Martinez-Cañas' gelatin silver print photograms and Brown's dust mound work. Two works from this series would be shown at Art Basel Miami Beach in december.

2005
Starts series 'Lies', on which she questions photography's ability to blur truth and fiction and the effect that perception has on the interpretation of images. Selected, together with Kim Brown, to a three-week residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Florida, to create site-specific work for an exhibition in July. Experiments with creating images on newsprint, wax and acetate; and glueing them onto the walls. The exhibition 'Trading Places: Kim Brown + Maria Martinez-Cañas, Frances Trombly and Salvatore La Rosa' opens at the end of July. Exhibits her series 'Lies' at Fredric Snitzer Gallery on September. The year also brought exhibitions and acquisitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina.

2006
Selected as the 2006 Felix Gonzalex-Torres Community Art Project Visiting Artist by The Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, Miami, Florida. In March, two different bodies of work are exhibited at the 2006 FotoFest biennial in the De Santos Gallery, Houston, Texas.  One image from the Dustograms series is acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. Starts representation with De Santos Gallery in Houston. A solo show followed in May at the Sol Mednick Gallery of The University of The Arts (the former Philadelphia College of Art). Saw her work shifting from a representation of ‘truth’ to an adaptation of ‘truth’. Starts series Adaptation. Ends representation with the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, after more than 15 years. Completes a three-week residency for a site-specific installation at the Phillip and Patricia Frost Art Museum at Florida International University for an exhibition titled A Room Of One’s Own: Teresita Fernández, Maria Elena Gonzålez, Quisqueya Henriquez and María Martínez-Cañas. The exhibition had an accompanying catalog with an essay by Julia P. Herzberg. The research for this installation requires her to work in Pine Plains, New York, during the month of June. She photographed with a 1952 Linhoff Standard Press 4 x 5 camera and Polaroid Type 55 film in the middle of the woods. The resulting work, A Room For Eden (To Ana), becomes a photographic mural measuring 9 feet tall x 50 feet wide, that was hand-waxed and pierced with branches of live curly willow throughout the image. She creates a watering system behind two walls of the installation that allows the branches to continue growing for the duration of the exhibition [four months]. This work suddenly became a sculptural photograph and it reinforces in her the unlimited possibilities of photography. Exhibits for the first time four of her new works titled Adaptation at ArtBasel Miami Beach at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, in december.

2007
Starts working on trying to bridge the gap between drawing and photography with her Tracing Series. Combining photographic images with hand-traced drawings printed on canvas. Selected as a finalist for the Cintas Fellowship, exhibits the series Adaptation at the Frost Art Museum in June. Receives the $15,000.00 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual & Media Artists, Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs, for the second time. Exhibits the first six canvases from the Tracing Series at the Museum of Contemporary Art Goldman Warehouse, Miami, Florida. The Ella Cisneros Fontanals Foundation acquires three of her Adaptation works for their permanent collection. Miami Art Museum acquires one of her Adaptation works. Creates and exhibits the large work [75 x 119 inches] The Void, for an exhibition together with her students from New World School of The Arts in Miami, Florida. The work is afterwards acquired by Juan and Lucrecia Loumiet for their personal collection. In June goes to Baltimore, Maryland, to be a visiting artist and give a lecture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Nominated by Olga Viso for an Smithsonian Institution's Artist Research Fellowship. Selected for a Creative Capital Professional Development Program in September.

2008
Exhibits, together with Kim Brown, a selection of the Dustograms series at Lehigh University Art Gallery, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Lehigh University acquires one of the large works from the exhibition for their permanent collection. Travels to Chicago in april for a lecture on her work at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in a memorial tribute to Robert Loescher, former teacher and mentor. Invited by Wave Hill, New York, to re-created her installation "A Room For Eden [To Ana]" for an exhibition in June. Starts working with the assistance of Jessica Ujaque, one of her former students from New World School of the Arts, on the 90 photographic newsprint-panels that will be part of the installation. Travels to New York in June to installed the work with the assitance of another former student, Lauren Pascarella. Returns to New York in August for an ArtTable talk at Wave Hill. Starts the series "Duplicity As Identity" merging images of her father and her self as part of a series of three different bodies of work. Invited to exhibit at The Freedom Tower in Miami, Florida, for a one-person exhibition that will covered the last four years of her work. Experiments with vellum to create negatives for contact printing. Creates the work "Duplicity As Identity: John Doe/Richard Roe", using Printing-Out-Paper. Invited to be part of ArtBasel Miami Beach Artists' Studio Visits.

2009
The Miami Art Museum acquires, directly from the owner, her work "Años Continuos [1994-95]" - the original piece that consists of about 400 cut-images created for her large public art installation at Miami International Airport. Continues work on her "Duplicity As Identity" series with a series of unique images created with an old Polaroid Land Camera called The Colorpack using Fuji Instant Color Film. This work titled "Duplicity As Identity: Enigma" would become the last work at her exhibition at The Freedom Tower and will consist of 250 individual images. Starts working with Gean Moreno, artist and writer, on the essay and curatorial aspects of the exhibition. Selected to be a featured artist at The Miami Herald Art Basel magazine. Exhibits in december at ArtBsel Miami Beach with Fredric Snitzer Gallery and at Pulse Miami Art Fair with Julie Saul Gallery. Invited again to be part of ArtBasel Miami Beach Artists' Studio Visits. Her one-person exhibition "Tetralogy: Lies, Adaptation, Tracing and Duplicity As Identity" opens to the public on December 1st, 2009, with a total of 267 works from the last four years [2005-2009].

2010- back to top
Awarded the No Strings Foundation grant.