Sacred Icons On Produce Boxes
My Review of the Buffalo AKG Exhibit "Narsiso Martinez: From These Hands/De Estas Manos"
In a recent interview discussing immigration from our Mexican border, the 45th President and GOP frontrunner for the 2024 GOP Presidential nomination said this:
Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.
This nonsense, fascist word salad - Trump says “nobody has any idea where these people are coming from,” but describes them “diseased, [insane] terrorists” - is meant to dehumanize people from south of the US border. This is a clear step (Step #4) toward an American genocide of immigrants with brown skin.
Trump is not subtle and his plans are clear. He has labelled those who oppose him “vermin” and plans an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration, including a mass arrest of “undocumented” people followed by their concentration and detention in sprawling camps.
It is into this heady mix of disinformation and fear-mongering that the Buffalo AKG Museum has opened Narsiso Martinez: From These Hands/De Estas Manos in its Hemicycle Gallery.
Medieval Christian Iconography Meets 20th Century Social Realism
Narsiso Martinez explained his artistic mission in Issue No. 26 of the literary journal The Common.
I seek to honor farmers and reveal the difficult working conditions they face. Their portraits and scenes from the fields are executed on found produce boxes. When I nest images of farmworkers amidst the colorful brand names and illustrations of agricultural corporations, I hope to help the viewer make a connection, or a disconnection rather, and start creating consciousness about the people who farm their food.
Although Martinez’s overt social consciousness and working-class subject matter associate him with the Depression Era Social Realism movement, his detailed portraits may be characterized as illustrations augmenting the produce boxes rather than more traditional portraits.
In “Easy Grape” (below), the figure holds our gaze and, despite being covered up to her nose in (pesticide protective) garments, her image is so detailed the viewer could likely recognize her in a crowd a month later.
Christian Iconography
Martinez’s farm workers are not merely heroic, but sacred. He uses the image of Christ on the Cross (With Care, above) and creates Medieval triptychs using gold leaf and charcoal in the same way Medieval painters portrayed the Madonna and other Christian figures of reverence (Unlimited Edition, below, with 14th Century triptych for comparison).
When the exhibit closes in April 2024, the US will be just a few short months from a Presidential election which will determine whether Martinez’s workers will be rounded up by an authoritarian regime and placed in deportation camps. If that happens, there will be no space to consider the fragile beauty and humanity of the people who produce our food.
I suggest you see this timely and powerful exhibit while you can.
Narsiso Martinez’s From These Hands is on display at the Buffalo AKG Museum’s Hemicycle Gallery until Monday, April 22, 2024. More information can be found here.
Excellent review. I wish I could see Martinez's work in person.