Florencia Martínez Aysa (1994) is a visual artist and professor of Visual Communication, trained at IPA. She holds a postgraduate degree in Art, Communication and Memory (FLACSO, Argentina), studied Fine and Visual Arts at Faculdade de Artes (UDELAR), and was co-founder of the feminist collective La Truca. She has exhibited individually and collectively since 2012 in Uruguay and abroad.

In 2026, she will participate in the 69º Salon de Montrouge, France. She is currently exhibiting at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales Uruguay and undertaking a residency at Pivô Arte e Pesquisa, São Paulo, within the FAARA Conecta program of Fundación Ama Amoedo. In 2025, she served as a juror for the Fondos Regionales MEC and presented a solo exhibition at the Alianza Francesa de Montevideo, curated by Ce Vignolo. That same year, she completed a residency at Casa Snowapple (Mexico) through the Wilderness grant.

She has been selected for prizes such as 61° Premio Nacional de Artes Visuales – Clever Lara and 59° Premio Nacional de Artes Visuales Margaret Whyte (EAC Montevideo), and has participated in residencies at institutions such as AADK, Múrcia; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; and Jabutipê, Porto Alegre.

Crisopea (2025) develops from the abrojo [puncturevine], a botanical symbol that, for the artist, represents insubordination and insubmission, as it possesses mechanisms and behaviors that work for survival and adaptation. In her childhood, Martinez Aysa used to play with abrojos and wield them as powerful weapons. Today, she appropriates them through formal and symbolic intersections.

Since she began investigating the plant, the artist has used it to represent emotional wounds. She wears abrojos as jewels, as trophies of battles won. “With the abrojos mapped across the territory, I relate my wound to the place. My skin, which once served as the supporting surface for these assemblages, becomes the soil where they grow—I plant memory and abrojos,” says the artist. For her, the plant becomes an icon representing the process of adapting to a hostile environment without losing its vital traits—adaptations made to remain faithful to one’s own nature.