Martha Atienza
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Artistic Identity
Martha Atienza is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in Bantayan Island, Philippines. Her work is a hybrid of contemporary art, environmental stewardship, and long-term community collaboration. Her approach is autobiographical, informed by her family history of seafarers and her Dutch-Filipino heritage, and she weaves together documentary, installation, and participatory action to explore the cultural and ecological shifts in island life.
Vision
Martha’s practice challenges conventional ideas of where art belongs, what it can look like, and how it shapes the future. By treating art as evidence, as memory, and as collective action, she seeks to build models that safeguard culture, people, and the land—deeply rooted in Bantayan yet meaningful to many coastal and island communities.
Studio as Site: The ArtLab
Martha has formally reclaimed her integrated practice by establishing her own platform and website under her name, with her studio now renamed the ArtLab. The ArtLab serves as a space for experimentation, collaboration, knowledge exchange, and creation. GOODLand, once structured as a separate NGO initiative, is now positioned as a long-term project within her personal art practice, rooted at the ArtLab in the watershed area of Sitio 37, Bantayan Island.
GOODLand: Art as Ecosyste
GOODLand is a site-specific, socially engaged art platform that hosts interconnected programs rooted in care for land, water, culture, and community. Its initiatives include:
A demo farm focused on regenerative farming and the revival of ancestral practices
- A seed-saving program in partnership with Global Seed Savers
- A community savings circle that sustains the upkeep of shared infrastructure
- A native plant rehabilitation effort, framed as: “restoring the watershed by reintroducing native plants and trees, and allowing the land to heal and regenerate naturally. With the help of GOODLand and the local community, this process is supported and accelerated—turning care into collective action.”
Together, these pillars form what Martha calls a Living Archive or Living Museum, a walkable, experiential exhibition beyond the white cube. The site serves as both a place for daily life and a space for artistic reflection.
GOODLand Site
The Archive
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