V. Kim Martinez works are based on social issues that affect her environment. Her creative process begins by asking a series of questions followed by an ensuing journey that includes research and engagement with the people whose stories she wants to tell. Emerging out of a Chicano art tradition utilizing the  power of art to reveal and critique, with iconography and symbols that speak to that tradition. Her works reveals the imbalance of power and the limitations of institutions, whether focused on the structure of a prisons or gender norms of patriarchy.