FLORENCIA MARTINEZ WITH PUERTAS Y PAREDES AT GILDA CONTEMPORARY ART, MILAN
What is the nature of a threshold? To what extent can seemingly univocal elements such as a door or a wall be reinterpreted as symbolic devices, capable of redefining the relationships between space, body, and perception? These questions underpin Puertas y Paredes, an installation and performance project by Florencia Martinez, presented by Gilda Contemporary Art as part of the Fuorisalone del Mobile 2026. The work investigates the concept of the boundary, understood not as a fixed condition but as a dynamic field between separation and the possibility of crossing.
The structure – measuring 200 × 200 × 20 cm – is composed of wood, wire, textiles, lace, and rope. These heterogeneous materials contribute to the formation of a complex spatial device poised between construction and disintegration. Within this configuration, the wall relinquishes its purely divisive function to assume that of an ambiguous threshold, at once an obstacle and a potential opening. The work engages with a broader reflection on the symbolic value of the wall, traditionally associated with separation, restriction, and protection. In Martinez’s approach, however, it also becomes a site of relational tension—a surface onto which the desire for knowledge and encounter with alterity is projected. The “wall” thus emerges as an unstable entity, containing within itself the potential for dissolution and inviting a perceptual renegotiation on the part of the viewer.
A central aspect of the project lies in its explicitly relational dimension, particularly oriented toward a younger audience. The installation functions as a tool for identifying immaterial barriers – whether internal or socially constructed – and for exploring alternative modes of crossing them. In this context, overcoming limits is not conceived in oppositional or confrontational terms, but rather as a practice grounded in openness: kindness, curiosity, and emotional intelligence.
Throughout the exhibition period, the work is activated through a participatory performative component. Visitors are invited to physically engage with the structure, establishing a direct relationship with the threshold-device and experimenting with partial or symbolic forms of passage. This interaction generates immediate photographic documentation: images are printed in real time on acetate and progressively incorporated into the installation, forming an evolving visual archive. This cumulative process transforms the work into an open organism, in which each contribution participates in the construction of a collective memory. The traces left by participants remain as markers of a shared experience of negotiating boundaries, underscoring the processual nature of the work.
Puertas y Paredes ultimately challenges conventional categories of separation and connection, inviting viewers to reconsider the boundary not as something to be removed, but as a condition to be reinterpreted – a threshold through which new possibilities of encounter may emerge.
Florencia Martinez was born in Buenos Aires in 1962 and has lived and worked in Milan since 1990. Her practice, deeply informed by her dual Argentine and Italian cultural background, focuses on themes of identity, memory, and the symbolic construction of space. Working across painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, she places particular emphasis on textiles as a privileged medium. Materials such as lace, canvas, jute, and embroidery are employed as narrative surfaces and symbolic devices, capable of evoking layered meanings tied to both individual and collective experience. Her work has been exhibited widely in Italy and internationally in both institutional contexts and private galleries.
“Puertas y Paredes “will be on view at Gilda Contemporary Art, Via San Maurilio 14, Milan, from April 20 to 26, 2026. For information and performance bookings: info@gildacontemporaryart.it
