Martin Gonzales
Dallas, Texas
Interdisciplinary Artist
Martin Gonzales was born in London, England, and raised in Dallas, Texas, by parents who left San Antonio in pursuit of a better life, escaping communities broken by systemic violence and leaving behind everyone they knew.
He attended El Centro Community College in 2013, then the University of Minnesota, graduating with a BFA in 2017. It was here that Gonzales felt supported by an institution for the first time and began sculpting and making performance art.
Before graduate school, Gonzales worked as the dinosaur mascot at the Dallas Zoo. Inside the costume, his joy was openly received — the Dilophosaurus let him be the parts the script does not afford brown men.
In 2022, he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studio Practice at the University of Maryland. He joined MASS MoCA as an Arts Fabricator, working across nineteen major exhibitions. In 2023, he was selected for MASS MoCA’s state fellowship grant. In 2025 he collaborated with E.J. Hill for the exhibition Velvet Faith at Dallas Contemporary. In 2025, he also received the Emerging Artist Fellowship at Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), and participated in Maine’s Colby College Lunder Institute’s weeklong Summer Think Tank.