Erica Kelly MartiN

www.ericakellymartin.com / @ericakellymartin

Erica Kelly Martin is a photographer and visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her work examines the artifacts and absurdities of American life through meticulously staged still lifes, human inflected landscapes, and portraits that teeter between the sacred and the irreverent.

A former environmental activist and attorney turned fine artist, Martin brings a perceptive eye to surreal domestic rituals, fusing humor, foreboding, and beauty in equal measure. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at MIA Fair in Milan, Photo London, as well as galleries in Paris, Los Angeles, and across the United States. 

Her series examine how we relate to institutions, objects, cultural myths, and the stories we tell ourselves, inviting a reordering of what we hold sacred, what we inherit, and what we choose to discard. Whether unpacking the emotional impact of consumer culture and the things we hold on to (I’m Fine, Everything’s Fine), delving into the American psyche on long drives through the boulevards and highways of the West (West of Truth), or reimagining the stories of women from myth and literature through a feminine lens (A Bee in the Rose), Martin probes the scaffolding of deeply rooted belief systems; personal, political, and paradoxical. She encourages us to reconfigure our relationship to objects, institutions, and inherited narratives—inviting us to question the shared fictions we’ve accepted as truth.

Martin serves on the Board of the Los Angeles Center of Photography, and as an advisor to Pasadena Photography Arts. Also, she is a partner, a metalsmith, and the mother of two extraordinary humans, two dogs, two cats, and a considerable number of boxes.