Edgar Martins is a Portuguese-born artist, raised in Macau (China), who lives and works in the United Kingdom, where he earned a Master of Arts in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in London. Martins uses archival material to explore the limits between fiction and documentation.
His work is represented in the following museum collections: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; National Media Museum, Bradford, UK; RIBA, London, UK; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal; Fundação EDP, Lisbon, Portugal; Fondation Carmignac, Paris, France; MAST, Bologna, Italy, among other institutions. Martins’ work has been exhibited internationally at MoMA PS1, New York, New York; Centro de Arte Moderna de Braganca, Portugal; Museu do Oriente, Lisbon, Portugal; The Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland; The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK; and the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK, among other venues. The Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian in Paris, France, hosted Martins’ retrospective exhibition in 2010, and in 2011, Martins represented Macau (China) at the 54th Venice Biennale.
In 2008, Martins was the recipient of the inaugural New York Photography Award (Fine Art category) and, between 2009 and 2018 the BES Photo Prize (Portugal), the SONY World Photography Award (2008 & 2017), the IPA Award (Fine-Art), The Lens Culture Art Awards, amongst others. Martins’ first book—Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies—was awarded the Thames & Hudson and RCA Society Book Art Prize. Between 2002 and 2018, Martins published twelve monographs, which were also met with critical acclaim.
We Tell Ourselves Stories…In Order To Live in summer 2018 was his first exhibition with Catharine Clark Gallery. Martins’ first solo exhibition with the gallery is in the spring of 2019.