DANI MARTI ’50 Artists: 50 Years’ at the University of Wollongong

July 16, 2025

Dani Marti’s video work ‘Butterflyman’ will be featured in the major group show ’50 Artists: 50 Years’ at the University of Wollongong from 04.08. – 10.12.25. The exhibition seeks to highlight the diversity and significance of the UOW Art Collection as part of the university’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

On this work, the artist says: “Filmed during my OZCO residency in NYC. I met and filmed Mark in 2010. I saw him again when I got back to NYC in 2012; he didn’t look too good and he had lost a lot of weight due to his addiction to meth while living with HIV. We organised a filming session. Three weeks later, I run into him in the street  and he presented some skin lesions on his face. I asked him to do a second filing session. Dani Marti chose to film his friend performing one of his more positive passions: flagging – a routine commonly performed in gay clubs, which draws inspiration from Japanese fan dancing. Marti’s work explores intimately the meaning of/behind ‘surface’, and how, as we see in Butterfly Man, someone’s story can literally be written on their skin.”

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Image caption: Dani Marti, ‘Butterflyman’, 2012, video, 16 minutes