Martine Gutierrez Commissioned for New Wall at WAM Installation, to Be Titled “First Revelation of the Sovereign Queen”

WORCESTER, MA—June 29, 2026—The Worcester Art Museum (WAM) announced today that celebrated interdisciplinary artist Martine Gutierrez has been selected to create the next commission for the Museum’s long-standing Wall at WAM initiative—installed on a 67-foot-long, second floor wall of the Museum’s Renaissance Court. Known for her work exploring identity, heritage, and the construction of self, Gutierrez will create a large-format photographic work in dialogue with WAM’s historic permanent collection and architecture titled First Revelation of the Sovereign Queen. The new commission will open September 23, 2026, and remain on view for two years. It is the twelfth iteration in the Wall at WAM initiative since it was launched in 1999, and follows Correspondence (for Elizabeth Bishop) by Crystalle Lacouture, which opened in 2024.

For her Wall at WAM commission, Gutierrez will draw inspiration from religious artworks across the Museum’s collection—including its celebrated mosaics, paintings, and sculptures—and from cultures spanning centuries and continents. Known for creating elaborate photographic self-portraits using mannequins, handcrafted sets, and original costumes, Gutierrez will produce a new large-scale image that brings together references from these historical objects with elements of her own cultural heritage. The resulting work will explore how photography can reinterpret enduring themes of identity, transformation, and spirituality for contemporary audiences.

“We are thrilled to bring Martine Gutierrez’s singular vision to the Wall at WAM,” said Samantha Cataldo, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Worcester Art Museum. “One of the great strengths of an encyclopedic museum is the opportunity to illuminate unexpected resonances across time and culture, and contemporary artists, particularly those as incisive as Gutierrez, are uniquely poised to do this. By synthesizing these enduring symbols with elements of her own intersectional identity and lived experience, Gutierrez creates imagery that prompts urgent conversations about how identity is constructed, expressed, and therefore valued.”

“I am so excited to unveil this new work to the visitors of the Worcester Art Museum,” says Gutierrez. “It has been made for the Renaissance Court, in conversation with religious artifacts from around the world found in surrounding galleries. Working on a large public scale is always exciting, but unlike other pieces I have made, I don’t think of this project as a billboard. Instead, I’ve been approaching it as a mural that alters the experience of the Museum.”

Martine Gutierrez’s work blurs the boundaries between performance, photography, and self-portraiture. Through constructed worlds and cinematic tableaux, she explores identity as both artifice and truth—intertwining personal heritage, mythology, and popular culture into reflections on belonging and transformation. Her practice reimagines the divine through a contemporary gaze, merging ancient symbolism with new forms of image-making. In her work, Gutierrez embodies her subjects, becoming both muse and maker, both icon and observer—inviting viewers into a dialogue about visibility, power, and the fluid performance of self.

Gutierrez (born 1989, Berkeley, California) earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has received several awards including most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2025. In 2018, Gutierrez produced Indigenous Woman, a project in the form of a 124-page magazine replete with fashion spreads, product advertisements and a Letter from the Editor all dedicated, as Gutierrez describes it, to “the celebration of Mayan Indian heritage, the navigation of contemporary indigeneity and the ever-evolving self-image.” This body of work has been widely praised and exhibited all over the world, including the 58th Venice Biennale. Her work has further been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many other institutions, and has been collected by museums around the country including the Worcester Art Museum. In 2021, the Public Art Fund commissioned Gutierrez’s public art installation ANTI-ICON to be exhibited in over 300 bus shelters across New York City, Chicago, and Boston. In addition to her artistic practice, Gutierrez is a published musician and has produced several commercial videos. Gutierrez lives and works in New York.

On Friday, September 25, the Museum will host an After Hours event with Gutierrez to celebrate the opening of the new installation. And on Sunday, September 27, Gutierrez will present an Artist Talk on the sources of inspiration and process that went into her work. Both events are open to the public and free for Worcester Art Museum Members, with tickets available at worcesterart.org/events.

“At its core, the Worcester Art Museum exists to connect people, communities, and cultures through the experience of art—and the Wall at WAM has long been one of our most powerful tools for doing exactly that,” said Claire Whitner, Director of Curatorial Affairs and James A. Welu Curator of European Art. “When a contemporary artist as thoughtful as Martine Gutierrez engages deeply with our collection, she models for our visitors a way of looking that crosses boundaries of time, geography, tradition, and personal experience, to encourage people to see the unfamiliar as much as the familiar. Placing her work in the Renaissance Court activates the entire space, inviting audiences to see our historic holdings as living, relevant, and open to new interpretation.”

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