Six years ago, Cristina Martinez was a fashion student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, obsessively illustrating garments. While her peers were focused on the technicality of the stitch, Martinez was lost in the "story" of the person wearing the clothes. Today, she is the powerhouse fine artist behind The Roots, a massive 52-foot mural on the 79th floor of the 3 World Trade Center—a space where she has planted a vibrant, permanent flag for Black and Brown women.
Martinez’s evolution from a fashion illustrator to a global fine art phenomenon shows the power of authenticity in artists. She uses fashion and other soft feminine attributed qualities as power to claim space in a global art canon that has historically overlooked women of color. This is why her work is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Gender Equality and Reduced Inequalities.
For Martinez, her shift from fashion to fine art was a gradual realization. As she explained in an interview with Essence, she was spending so much time illustrating her garments and creating a whole person that she realized she was drawn more to the story than the actual construction of the piece. This focus on narrative eventually led her to leave school and begin painting the ideas living in her mind.
She stopped referencing the external world and started looking inward, exploring her identity as a Black and Mexican woman. Raised by the Mexican side of her family in Seattle but acutely aware that the world perceived her as a Black woman, her work became a bridge between these two cultures. This intersectional heritage serves as the engine of her authenticity, allowing her to create work that resonates as a direct reflection of her lived experience.
Perhaps no body of work encapsulates Martinez’s mission better than her Water Me series. The series wasn't born in a high-end studio, but on yellow Post-it notes during a soul-crushing desk job at a radiology clinic. She challenged herself to do one-line drawings without lifting her pen to express how she was feeling each day. These sketches, depicting women with petals falling from their eyes and vines growing from their necks, evolved into symbols of self-care and resilience.
The message was simple yet radical: water yourself and water your neighbors. This vulnerability struck a chord globally, attracting a diverse following that includes cultural icons like H.E.R. and Ciara. By highlighting the necessity of self-preservation, Martinez proves that the creative economy thrives when artists prioritize mental health as part of the creative journey.
The installation of The Roots at 3 World Trade Center marked a pivotal moment for her representation in New York City's corporate and artistic landscape. On the 79th floor, high above the humming streets, Martinez painted over 30 figures into a space where women of colour are often statistically absent. The mural is a study in perseverance, inspired by the history of the site itself—the idea of blooming again after being at your lowest point. Martinez used the 52-foot span to showcase faces that look like her cousins and friends, providing a visual disruption of the mighty sky towers. It serves as an everyday reminder that Black and Brown bodies belong in every room, especially those at the top.
While her solo work is a journey of self-discovery, Martinez’s collaborations with her husband, artist Al-Baseer Holly, represent a different kind of growth. She describes the creative partnership as their "easiest love language," a sentiment shared on her official website. They join two distinct stories on a single canvas to create a more impactful narrative, often working in a "creative bubble" where their three children participate in the artistic process. This commitment to authenticity extends to her brand partnerships; Martinez maintains a strict rule to say "no" if a collaboration limits her ability to show up as her true self. This ensures that her work remains a tool for healing rather than just a commercial product.
Martinez’s ultimate goal is to see her work in museums to reshape the institution for the next generation. She remembers going to museums as a child and not seeing herself in the frames, a void she is now filling through galleries and her active presence on Instagram. Through her studio and her public installations, she continues to prove that art is a revolutionary tool. She encourages everyone to find their own creative outlet, asserting that if everybody just made art, the world would be a lot better. Cristina Martinez learned to bloom through the concrete, providing a mirror for millions to see their own growth, their own roots, and their own power to bloom again.
For more information about Cristina Martinez’s work, check out her Instagram @sew_trill or website www.juneandmars.com.