VISUAL ANTHROPRENEUR

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Venazir Martinez is a Filipino visual anthropreneur, and a street muralist. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines Baguio. She was awarded Best Thesis through her art and advocacy entitled Hila-bana. This street art hunt challenged the visual perception of the public through the use of cultural emblems as a means to revitalize Filipino ancestral heritage.

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Project Hila-bana gained traction in 2018 in Baguio City, Philippines. The title was derived from the Filipino term hilbanahan meaning temporary stitching. The street art movement is unified by a red thread that serves as a visual guide for the public in search of our featured Filipino identities across the globe.
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She co-founded 23 Sampaguita Artist Collective which cultivates art education and cultural exchanges between artists as a catalyst for positive social change. She is the founder of Sining Eskinita, a multi-sensorial street art festival that activates dull alleys into creative platforms. Together with 23 Sampaguita, their vision is to guide artists from all disciplines to set the streets in the Philippines as instant institutional grounds for creative development.

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Martinez's creative process delved into the influence of Filipino indigenous knowledge and links it with our contemporary mindset through the lenses of our multitudinous identities. Her works are inspired by empirical stories of the cultural advocates she met along her creative voyage.  Her style captures the realistic representations of people from various customs. Simultaneously, permeated with flamboyant stratification of abstractive, delineating forms, and spontaneous overall. This progressive visual approach exemplifies the multifaceted influences that shaped our core values. Venazir's deep enthrallment on the discourse of the discovery of one’s identity ultimately engendered her existence, thus, primed to deconstruct her concept of continuity on Filipino’s connected presence on a global scale.