photo by Jill Petracek
Conceptually highbrow and physically slapstick - TimeOutLA A bewitching hybrid of standup, clown and performance artist - PBS A polymath of unquantifiable largesse, breaking brains one cultural consumer at a time - BOMBChristina Catherine Martinez (Mexican American, b. Bellflower, CA) lives and works between Los Angeles, Mexico City, and New England. She was named both a Comedian You Should Know by Vulture and a Comic to Watch by TimeOutLA in 2020, and is a 2018 recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her varied approaches to art criticism, published in platforms such as The Los Angeles Times, Aperture, Frieze, Artforum, Bookforum, e-flux criticism, DOCUMENT Journal, Dirt.fyi and Texte Zur Kunst.
Martinez turns forms of knowledge into sites of play in order to reveal the often-invisible systems, contexts, and morés that proscribe behaviors within them. Her practice is a marriage of her training as a freelance art critic and classically trained clown, opting to attend École Philippe Gaulier in Étampes, France in lieu of a traditional MFA. Through writing, video, performance, photography, and socially-mediated sculpture, the anxieties of cultural participation are presented as perpetually optional. Boop!
Christina has written for The Eric Andre Show and the GLAAD media award nominated animated series Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, the first ever Spanish-language show on Adult Swim. She stars in the PBS docu-series United States of Comedy, the FX short-form series Two Pink Doors, and as an actor, frequently collaborates with filmmakers across the worlds of art and independent film.
She has performed commissions for The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Toronto, REDCAT Center for the Performing Arts, The Geffen Contemporary, the Nerman Musuem, the Spit Take Comedy Series in Minneapolis, the SXSW Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas.
Her book of essays, titled Aesthetical Relations, is forthcoming in an expanded and revised third edition from Hesse Press in Spring 2026.