Cecilia Martin

31/01/2026

Let me take you inside 66 Camden Square, a house I’ve admired for years from my kitchen window, so stepping inside felt a little gift.

Home of Francesca Francossi — artist, educator, and co-founder/art director of Rochester Square, the visit was part of an Foundation tour linked to the publication At Home in London, The Mews Houses.

Designed around a rigorous 3×3 metre grid by Peter Bell (and later realised by Rodger Davis), the house balances precision and lightness: reclaimed brick at street level, then timber, glass, colour and planting unfolding above and within. A subtle play of privacy, views and levels that feels both considered and quietly generous.

Thank you to my friend for letting me know about the visit, and to Francesca for her warm hospitality. I feel lucky for the visit!

31/01/2026

Let me take you inside 66 Camden Square, a house I’ve admired for years from my kitchen window, so stepping inside felt a little gift.

Home of Francesca Francossi — artist, educator, and co-founder/art director of Rochester Square — the visit was part of an Foundation tour linked to the publication At Home in London, The Mews Houses

Designed around a rigorous 3×3 metre grid by Peter Bell (and later realised by Rodger Davis), the house balances precision and lightness: reclaimed brick at street level, then timber, glass, colour and planting unfolding above and within. A subtle play of privacy, views and levels that feels both considered and quietly generous.

Thank you to my friend for letting me know about the visit, and to Francesca for her warm hospitality. I feel lucky for the visit!

12/01/2026

Let me take you inside the London home of Sigmund Freud. Witness firsthand the study of the father of psychoanalysis and the birthplace of modern talking therapy. It was an exact replica of his Vienna study, which he had to leave because of the N**i invasion. In this spacious house he spent his last days and held his final therapy sessions. Thanks to his daughter Anna, it was transformed into a museum in 1986.

It felt intimate and human, a great glimpse into his family life. There’s a beautiful connection to the Surrealist movement with a portrait that Dalí made of him.

My takeaways: his love for ancient art, he placed the pieces facing him on his desk, for him a metaphor of how our past defines our present. And the “transformational couch,” as he called it, with a Persian rug draped over it and his seat positioned behind so patients couldn’t stare at his face while exploring their unconscious minds.

Thank you, Freud, for leaving us this legacy that changed the way we understand our minds. It took a huge amount of courage to challenge conventional thinking. His ideas about sexuality and the unconscious were considered morally offensive at the time. “Resistance was strong and unrelenting. But the struggle is not over.

The work of understanding ourselves continues...

03/12/2025

Manual of Reputation Experiene is out!
Published recently by INTERCOM (International Committee for Museum Management) - ICOM

It features a summary of the workshops James Heaton, Jadran Antolovic and I led for INTERCOM (International Committee for Museum Management) - ICOM Trebinje, Bosnia, along with a worksheet to put everything into practice. As Carl Jung said, “You are what you do, not what you say you will do.” Leaders shape culture through their actions, not their statements.

The full publication link bio.

Thank you again to all the participants who attended and to Goranka Horjan Ziska others at International Council of Museums (ICOM) and ICOM INTERCOM - International Committee for Museum Management who made this possible.

Special thanks to Dronjic for the photos and design!

18/11/2025

Bold brands don’t happen by accident. They’re led with the courage of their convictions. ✨

Purpose is the bravest act a brand can take, transforming audiences from passive receivers into active participants.

💬 Are you daring to lead your brand?

📖 Read the full article via the link in bio.

Thank you and the organizing committe for this wonderful collective effort.

Photo:

17/10/2025

Art & Typography Miscellaneous, Frieze London 2025

Two of my fave things…

26/09/2025

A summary of a beautiful place, Trebinje 🌞

26/09/2025

13/09/2025

I was very happy to see Amalia Ulman’s work at the Virtual Beaty exhibit at . I have been following Amalia’s work since 2014 with her social media project Excellence & Perfection. Amalia created a fictional online persona and tracked her performance through posts and images.

Ulman conceived of Excellences and Perfections as a “boycott” of her own online persona. For three months, she allowed her profiles to be exactly what social media seems to demand—that she be a “Hot Babe.”

11/09/2025

To commemorate the end of summer, let me tell you about a day I spent at Ipanema Beach.

It was 2013, and I had just given a talk at the International Council of Museums (ICOM) General Conference in Rio de Janeiro. This was the first time I spoke publicly about museum branding, and since then I have remained an active member of the community, including serving two terms on the board of .comms International Committee for Communications, Marketing and Audience Engagement .

I had a moment to explore.

Vibrancy, colors, and energy of the beach vendors immediately caught my attention. Later in my career, I returned to these impressions when reflecting on broader questions about the role of the informal economy in urban life.

In Brazil, the informal economy accounts for nearly 37% of the total workforce. On the streets you can buy almost anything: delicious tapiocas, refreshing drinks, clothes, handicrafts. Years later, during my work with the British Council Creative Economy program, I came across the research of Omar Nagati, Amin El-Didi, and Maria Suescun, which raises important questions about the tactical role of creative actors in cities shaped by informal economies and practices, and how cultural and creative work intersects with these dynamics.

I have always been in favour of grassroots initiatives. In recent years, it has become fashionable to romanticise urban informality—as Nagati, El-Didi, and Suescun discuss—as an alternative to regulated economies, often portraying it as a way for communities to pursue their own interests.

Yet this perspective can also obscure a harder truth: it risks absolving the state of its responsibility as guarantor of the public good leading to precarity and survival.

So much to discuss! I hope this perspective from an iconic urban beach that lives in the world’s imagination thanks to the music of Antônio Carlos Jobim, resonates with you.

Goodbye, summer…

17/07/2025

What makes Eufònic Festival so special?

For starters, Eufònic is not just a festival, it’s a beautifully curated journey through sound, visual, and digital-performative arts, set against the beautiful landscape of Terres de l’Ebre.

Little did I know what kind of experience awaited me.

Curated by Antònia Folguera (SONAR +D) and Marta Oliveres, the PRO sessions took place at the School of Art and Culture in Tortosa. A vibrant mix of artists, curators, and cultural producers gathered to exchange ideas and perspectives in an atmosphere that was sharp, generous, and dynamic.

The lineup included voices from across Europe: Johannes M. Hedinger (Institute for Land and Environment Art, Switzerland), Eduard Alarcón (Quantum Computing Lab, UPC, Barcelona), Maria Canellas (La Brossa, Barcelona), Marie Dumontier (Rencontres Audiovisuelles, France), Clara Montero (Tabakalera, Donostia), Edwin van der Heide, Heracles Papatheodorou (Digital and at Onassis Foundation), Kena Rodriguez, Zaiba Jabbar (HERVISONS, London), Tanja Sæter (Coast Contemporary, Oslo) and Charlotte Benedetti (Kikk Festival, Belgium), Kena Rodríguez (Sismògraf, Olot), Sara Serrano (IF Barcelona, Barcelona), Andrea Marcos, (El Pati, Barcelona) and curator Arnau Horta among others.

In the afternoon, we stepped out into the landscape, discovering site-specific installations placed among rice fields, squares, shops, and riverbanks.

These works, by artists such as Núria Rovira, Camila Sanginés, Lina Choi, Isabel Archs, Thalia Escribano, and Solimán López, lauren Mofffalt echoed the surroundings and offered powerful moments of immersion.

Thank you to Eufònic Festival for inviting me to speak about Branding for the Arts and a the need of a crystal clear “why”, a purpose.

It was an experience to contribute to a gathering so deeply rooted in place, community, and creative exploration.

26/06/2025

My father, Prof. Ramón Martín Mateo, was a pioneer in environmental law.

He was always researching, always writing.

One day I asked him,
“Dad, what are you writing about?”
“Water,” he said.
“Water shapes everything.”

I thought of him last night at Thirst: In Search of Freshwater at the beautifully curated by .

The exhibition takes you on a journey from ancient Mesopotamia and Victorian London to modern-day Nepal and Singapore.

It explores how deeply connected we are to freshwater and how only 3% of Earth’s water is actually freshwater.

💧 It shapes our health.
💧 Our ecosystems.
💧 Our lives, our cities, our history.

Especially moving:
Ice Records (2021) by Susan Schuppli — a haunting sound piece capturing the slow melt of glaciers. Haunting.

So lovely to see and Sánchez again — thank you!

If you’re in London, don’t miss it.

Water shapes everything.