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According to a press release, contemporary artist Guadalupe Martinez's solo exhibition, "Becoming River," will be on display at the Lycoming College Art Gallery from Sept. 4 through Nov. 28. Curated by Marisa C. Sánchez, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, in collaboration with the artist, "Becoming River" is Martinez's meditation on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, and her reflection on the river's profound presence in the landscape and the surrounding region.
An artist talk will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 14 in the Trogner Presentation Room, Krapf Gateway Center, Lycoming College. This talk coincides with Martinez's artist-in-residency and exhibit which is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Through her research and in thinking about the river's existence, the artist expressed "The Susquehanna is an ancestral presence, a humble yet powerful witness. It is over 300 million years old. I was amazed to learn that it predates the Atlantic Ocean and the breakup of Pangaea. This was a profound insight about time, and to the expansive dimensions by which we are constantly relating; being contained by without noticing. A cosmic omnipresence so much larger than ourselves and our culture."
At the gallery, "Becoming River" is an immersive installation that includes five large-scale projected video works, including three from Martinez's poetic project "Reflections on a Window Glass" (2020) and the debut of two new videos focused on the river and created by the artist specifically for this exhibition. Filmed in Williamsport, Pa., during the first part of her residency, these two videos explore Martinez's experience of the river. Conceiving this waterway as a "powerful witness," Martinez's approach considers the river's livingness, which recalls for Sánchez the writings of Robert Macfarlane, who claimed that "Rivers are our first singers, our first storytellers...[they are] a kind of storage medium, as well as a narrative force. We tell our stories with and through rivers."
In "Becoming River," Martinez invites viewers to reflect on what this river has held, what it has carried. Visitors to the gallery can contribute to "River Stories," an interactive section within the exhibit where the artist encourages them to share their stories about their relation to the river. This section of the exhibit provides space for the exchange of ideas and includes images from her "Sensorial Archive: Reserva Costanera Sur," made between 2012-2015, along the Río de la Plata in Buenos Aires. This work provides further context for her interdisciplinary artistic inquiry that approaches the landscape not merely as a geographic site, but as a living, embodied archive. Martinez has said of this aspect of her Sensorial Archive, "Soil, vegetation, rubble, atmospheric conditions, and the rhythm of the tides carry the deep imprints of political history and ecological transformation. Through walking, collecting, filming, and drawing, my practice attunes itself to these more-than-human forms of remembering, exploring how sensory aesthetics can access historical truths that language and conventional archives cannot hold." In line with this, Martinez offers visitors a somatic exercise titled "Rock Ritual," a self-guided exploratory walk that moves beyond the art gallery to the banks of the Susquehanna.
Martinez was invited to be an Artist-in-Residence at Lycoming College by Sánchez, who has researched and written about the artist's work since 2012, when she first met Martinez in the artist's studio at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where Martinez was a graduate student in the M.F.A. program at the time.
Martinez's work has since evolved to become a multidisciplinary artistic approach involving movement, touch, performance, and expressive arts, as well as land-nature connection. She has developed concepts of sensorial aesthetics and expansive pedagogies as radical tools for transforming art-making and collective relating.
About their current collaborative, interdisciplinary project at Lycoming College, Sánchez commented, "As an art historian and curator, I have long been artist-centered in my academic teaching, research, and curatorial practice. When I arrived at the College in fall 2023 and was asked to curate an exhibit for the Lycoming College Art Gallery, I began a conversation with Lupe about the possibility of collaborating on a project alongside an artist-in-residency. In turn, I sought out additional funding and, in summer 2024, submitted a grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts' Grants for Arts Projects (GAP), which was awarded to the College in August 2025 in support of this research project and creative collaboration." Sánchez further noted, "As a visual artist who also teaches performance art in academic settings, Guadalupe's interdisciplinary artistic practice and expansive pedagogy proposes that we consider and embrace modalities of learning that attend to the corporeal, experiential, relational, and the visual. I am excited to introduce Lupe's experimental work to students, faculty and the greater campus and Williamsport communities this fall semester."
Throughout the planning stages of this interdisciplinary and exploratory project, several faculty and student collaborations have taken shape and will be fully realized during the fall 2026 semester. While in residence in April 2026, Martinez offered an embodied workshop in collaboration with Rubén Varona, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, whose upper-level seminar, SPAN 426: Magical Realism and Latin American Imaginaries, were introduced to Brazilian author Clarice Lispector's "Água Viva" (1973), an important text of magical realism that anchors Martinez's "Reflections on a Window Glass," a multi-channel video installation. This fall, collaborations with Lycoming faculty members and their students include Amanda Gunderson, D.M.A., associate professor of music; Sánchez; Varona; Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish; and Emily Wilson, Ph.D., associate professor of astrophysics; as well as Lydia Huelskamp, director of Outdoor Leadership and Education; and Catri Barba, adjunct theatre faculty member teaching dance. Martinez will also engage students studying studio art with fine art faculty Andreas Rentsch, associate professor of art; and Howard Tran, Logan A. Richmond Endowed Professor of Art.
A unique component of this project has been a collaboration with Andrew Paulhamus, assistant professor of accounting, who embraced the curator's and artist's vision and opened his family farm as a research and workshop site for the project. Established by the Paulhamus family in 1838, Paul-Haven Farms is a generational farm situated among the rolling hills outside Williamsport. Martinez will offer a workshop on the farm where participants will be guided through collaborative experimental writing and performative walks to explore the body as a space of convergence for memories and histories, both personal and collective, in relation to the river and the Quenshukeny Run tributary. This workshop emerges from the artist's expanded pedagogy, which cultivates a practice where embodied learning transforms conventional approaches to art production and education -- a holistic process of liberating the body and the self, to occupy the often-disembodied spaces of academia and art institutions; allowing for a more expansive space to integrate and share knowledge.
Additionally, Martinez's art exhibit and residency coincide with Sánchez's ARHI-340: Performance Art History, a new course at the College that introduces students to the history and theory of performance art from a global perspective. In this context, students will have the opportunity to learn about Martinez's innovative art practice focused on embodied learning. They will engage the artist's performance-based practice, exploring the body, memory, history, and identity. Students in this course will also co-author a podcast focused on "Becoming River." The podcast will become part of the inaugural Lycoming College Podcast series supported by the College's Humanities Research Center.
The Lycoming College Art Gallery, is located at 25 W. Fourth St.The gallery is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 4-8 p.m.