Marta María Pérez Bravo

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Marta María Pérez Bravo (born 1959) is a Cuban artist known for black-and-white self-portraits in which she uses her own body as the central subject to express Afro-Cuban religions, especially Santería and Palo Monte. Her work focuses on ritual, motherhood, and femininity, with highly stylized poses and objects that are meaningful to her beliefs.

She studied painting in Havana at the San Alejandro Academy (1979) and the Instituto Superior de Arte (1984). While working on her senior thesis, she became interested in photography and has since made it her main medium. Pérez Bravo lived in Havana until 1995, when she moved with her family to Monterrey, Mexico, where she continues to live and work. She belongs to a generation of Cuban artists who left the country after the upheaval of the Special Period in the late 1980s.

Her work is usually small, staged black-and-white photographs in which she uses her body as a vessel to convey her cultural and religious perspective. She remains deeply connected to Afro-Caribbean spirituality, which holds that the divine can be found in all things, including ordinary objects. Because of this, she often includes familiar items like ropes, branches, and even animal parts to express sacred meaning.

Pérez Bravo’s self-portraits transform her body into an altar or an offering, blending spirituality with physical power. She explores themes of maternity, desire, and death, and her work often seeks to demystify motherhood. For example, the series Para concebir (To conceive) (1985) and Memories of Our Baby (1990) depict childbirth and motherhood in ways that challenge idealized notions of beauty, sometimes portraying physical violence to convey complex spiritual and personal truths.

Her art speaks to questions about gender, race, and culture, and is seen as a statement against the marginalization or folklorization of Afro-C Cuban traditions by presenting deeply personal, embodied experiences. Pérez Bravo has exhibited worldwide, including at major biennials in Havana, Istanbul, and Gwangju, and in prominent museums such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, among others.