Renzo Martens
(b. 1973) is a Dutch artist who attended the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunten in Ghent and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
Renzo Martens uses the medium of film to examine the role of camera in public space and to pose moral questions about the use of documentation and the limits of responsibility for the artist and the documentary filmmaker. Screenings of his films were recently held at the De Appel art centre and during the International Documentary Festival as well as at the Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art (Morality Act III – And the moral of the story is..., 2009) and the 7th Manifesta in Rovereto. He recently took part in a show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (Monumentalism, 2010) and the 6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2010).
At Auditorium Moscow, Renzo Martens will show his two much-discussed films Episode I, in which Martens visits refugees from the war in Chechnya, asking them deliberately insensitive questions, and Episode III - Enjoy Poverty, in which he works with a group of Congolese photographers, teaching them how to sell images of suffering to Western media and aid agencies. The artist will join in a discussion on “liberal” human rights discourse and their exploitative representation in documentary media today.