About Tirzo Martha

Tirzo Martha is a sculptor and performance artist. He was born, lives and works in Curaçao. There he studied at the Academi di Arte Korsou, then at the Utrecht School of the Arts and Frans Molenaars fashion school. In 1991 he returned to Curaçao.

His humanitarian and social commitment is what drives his work. Martha works with diverse communities and social groups. In 2006, together with David Bade, he founded the Instituto Buena Bista (IBB), a preparatory course for young people aged 14 to 25 who can then go on to an art academy or other further education. He also collaborated with David Bade on the ‘Look at me now project’, part of the slavery exhibition in the Rijksmuseum in 2021. They invited visitors to create ten new works together, based on stories from the exhibition.

For the 25th anniversary of Queen Beatrix, Martha designed five and ten guilder coins for the Netherlands Antilles. In 2019 Martha was awarded the Wilhelminaring, which is the biennial oeuvre prize for a leading sculpture. This prize was accompanied by an exhibition in the Coda Museum and the commission for a work in the Sprengen Park in Apeldoorn. The work, ‘Overcoming Ourselves In Order To Overcome’, was created in collaboration with nine residents of the city.

Especially for ARTZUID 2021, Tirzo Martha made ‘The Interpretation and Identification of the Meaning of Life’, a large installation that symbolizes human deficiency and inability.