Martinez’s paintings and multi-media works are based on social & environmental issues that affect our communities. In her creative process, Martinez posits a series of questions that are followed by an ensuing journey that includes research and engagement with the people and places whose stories she wants to tell.
She immerses herself in the walking rituals of indigenous inhabitants and explores the effects of environmental destruction. Emerging out of a Chicano art tradition she believes in the power of art to reveal and critique, and she gravitates towards iconography and symbols that speak to that cultural tradition.
In the work “Blood Falls” the painting reflects water that is trapped under the Taylor Glacier in Antartica for 1.5 million years without sunlight or oxygen and the energy of glaciers calving. This trapped water is emerging with the melting of the glacier resulting in falls that are bright red the only place on earth this occurs. Scientists often refer to this water as a “liquid time capsule.” After being sealed in the glacier at high pressure for so long, the brine saltwater turns blood red upon contact with the open air.
Possibly the largest tsunamis were triggered by landslides off the Hawaiian volcanoes. Volcanic events impacts Native Hawaiians with forced lava evacuations, disrupting daily life with volcanic smog ("vog") which can exacerbate respiratory issues, and create complex emotional response as a powerful connection to their ancestral lands, while others experience displacement and disruption depending on the severity of the eruption. Often insurance companies will not cover the cost of impact on homes forcing residents to live on the land without many amenities.The goat is an animal that was introduce by John Cook causing havoc over the years to the natural environment.
The encroachment of industry with refinery towers warping and multiple trains in the foreground, mid-ground, and background. The train on left hand side has no visible guiding mechanism as it barrels toward the small house on a very sharp curve. The falling I-Beams in the foreground represent the constant noise and dust produced by Utah Metal Works. The Industrial belt the orange conveyer acts as a dividing line moving back & forth in space indicating porous boundaries and those with power can adjust to suit their needs. The isolated blue carousel horse becomes a metaphor for the west.
MAGCORP MAGNESIUM CHLORIDE PLANT, UTAH on the edge of the Great Salt Lake produces all the magnesium metal made in the United States, this plant was the nation’s worst air polluter, releasing hundreds of tons of chlorine per day, which was around 90% of the chlorine emitted into the atmosphere from all sources nationwide. A lawsuit was filed against the company in the 1990s, for $1 billion for infractions, MagCorp, filed for bankruptcy. U.S. Magnesium, now operates the plant, releasing a few tons of chlorine per day, as opposed to a few hundred tons, as it did in the 1980s.
Wind patterns run through a group of tightly controlled stacked houses indicating Salt Lake City’s booming population growth and the small area of the lake that has shrunk almost in half in recent years. A wave of sand rising up under the houses and lake referencing the dwindling lakebed with high concentrations of neurotoxins and cancer causing carcinogens — including arsenic and mercury. The Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake left in the Western Hemisphere.
Skull Valley Indian Reservation, a small community of Goshute Peoples, located in an isolated valley between Dugway Proving Ground and the West Desert Hazardous Industry Area. Approximately, 30 Native Peoples live on the reservation located a few miles south of a Polynesian ghost town and former leper colony. In the 1960s, thousands of sheep were killed due to nerve gas testing at Dugway; their contaminated carcasses are buried in many unknown locations throughout the reservation, making farming or almost any land use unsafe. As late as 2015 Dugway was conducting concentrated chlorine gas testing.
Earthquake near the Rio Tinto mine April 2013 Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, the single largest mine landslide in history occurred in two events, 1.5 hours apart. Over 140 million tons of material “literally exploded out of the wall and travelled one and a half miles in 90 seconds”
7 Steps Forward 7 Steps Back
Comprehension and creation go together. This painting is about organizing a world to understand the complexities of this world that I am going to create through symbols, images, and gestures. This subject has been looked at by artist many times before and the way I organize my world will be the difference. It becomes a lineage to my thoughts and formal strategies.The narrative strategy and the media process grew organically for the video. The beginning, middle and end was fluid, I would draw a scene not really knowing what would come before or after. I allowed the process to determine the narrative outcome, resulting in an approach and intention that destabilizes the viewer by offering numerous interpretive choices that may or may not seem plausible—much like life on the border itself. This body of work is my attempt to reveal some of the complex hidden structures of migration.
7 Steps Forward 7 Steps Back- Animated Hand Drawn Video
This work is a result of my 7-day experience traveling along what is now the U.S /Mexico border, on routes used by migrants for millennia. My research also included print and electronic text, mapping of historic and contemporary northern and southern migratory routes, observational fieldwork that integrated conversations with migrants who have made journeys, and my own family history. I identified and traveled well-known routes used for thousands of years in this limited yet fluid space. The journey began by volunteering with the organization Humane Borders. I witnessed armed forces carrying high-powered weapons on both sides of the border. We continued to the infamous Devil’s Highway but because an agent had been killed the previous day, Border Patrol denied entrance. On to Sasabe, a U.S. border port of entry and one of the busiest migrant and drug smuggling corridors on the border. I saw more armed military personnel on my journey to the sister cities of Nogales.
Each scene required a new drawing to show the movement creating an artifact of the process that had all of the drawings embed in it. The titles of the scenes are from the poem Visions of the Daughters of Albion by William Blake 1794. The poem focus is on issues of gender, environment and Imperialism. The opening sequence utilizes the mythological aspects of birds who can depict the arrival of life or death. With their power of flight, they may be seen as carriers or symbols of the human soul, or as the soul itself, flying upward after a persons death. The video begins with the heartbeat and the symbolism of el Corazon.
Border patrol agents in Texas established a program in 2008 called BlueServo.net with an American Company whose primary service was to create a crowd sourcing virtual real time community watch along the Texas Mexico Border to allow virtual deputies to anonymously report alleged entries of suspicious border activities to the U.S. Border Patrol.
The surveillance monsters embed themselves into the ground. Two-million dollars was committed by Texas governor Perry for the virtual border by installing cameras, they thought they would end up with 4500 suspected immigration violations but they only made six. I was most surprised by was the amount of surveillance that we could see let alone what was not apparent.
Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost and stolen articles, was a powerful Franciscan preacher and teacher. He's often portrayed holding the child Jesus—or a lily—or a book. Here he tied upside down, to torture his statue until their loved one is found. We came across hundreds of shrines during our migration.
It often takes family effort to send someone over the border. Before the tightening of the border it was not uncommon mostly for the male to make the journey across to make money for several months and then return home to his family, but ironically with the tightening of the border more families began making the trip over.
The Customs and Border protection has spent spent billions. A major obstacle is that the government can seize private land under eminent domain but at great cost to the citizens along the border.
The section of the US –Mexico border fence between Yuma, Arizona and Calexico, California. The barrier is 15 feet tall and sits on top of sand so that it can be lifted by a machine and repositioned whenever the migrating sand dunes begin to bury it. The almost seven miles of floating fence cost about $6 million per mile to build.
In the tree there is a picture of Jesus left by someone to mark the spot as a shrine or perhaps a meeting place. The coyote character is luring a vigilante who becomes enthralled with the rope and does not notice that it is changing into a snake. My father used to tell me how to get a turkey’s attention, simply draw a line on the ground and it will become so engrossed he will not know what else is going on around him.
The snake eats the vigilante and is reborn as a vengeful guardian. I am recounting an experience we had with a snake at one camp site, we woke to the sound of a snake guarding his territory.
Human smuggling is sophisticated service industry in hands of the cartels particularly in difficult routes. Now some will take migrants as hostages taking away cell phones and anything else of value and leave in the desert if they become a liability, especially if it is a dangerous route. Brutal clashes between drug cartels and Mexican authorities have killed more than 50,000 people since the government launched a crackdown on the cartels. While the violence is across the board, women are particularly at risk.
Juarez Maquiladora Murders 400 girls and women have been murdered and many more abducted since 1993. (27) Many were mutilated beyond identification their bodies dumped in ditches and vacant lots near the city, many came from poor cities lured to Juarez by job prospects at the maquiladoras.
The Arizona recovered human remains projects a human rights organization who are attempting to accurately identify the remains, location, and cause of death to individuals who typically carry very little identification on them. They estimate that the remains of more than 6000 men women and children were recovered on the US Mexico border since the 1990’s. Amnesty International suggests that six out of ten migrant women become victims of sex trafficking, rape, and abduction during their Mexico migration to the US.
Removing the heart of the country. The closing scene references the bird again, flying upward after a persons death. With this work I am not offering any solutions, ultimately political transformation will be our collective ability to confront the violence on the border with real reform.
HC SVNT DRACONES- Text crowd into the edges of ancient maps in parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts beyond this there is nothing but danger.
Salitter is the essence of God which is “drying from the earth” in Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel “THE ROAD.” Detention centers run by ICE U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement an Investigative arm of Homeland security. We have two detention facilities in Utah.
The world I was seeing was organized around a set of focal points of named regions that seemed to be linked as remembered routes. The events experienced in it reflects the peoples lived experiences.
U.S gun walking 2006-11 program in Tucson and Phoenix by the AFT who purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to Mexican Cartels approximately 2500, the majority have not been recovered.
Along the border many refer to the surveillance drones as mosquitos under the control of Homeland Security
Mujeres de Colores
I create characters that are part real, part imagined; they are reconstructed from my memories of specific women. I draw imagery from sources such as super heroes, fashion, and identity. I manipulate these various codes to suggest political, social and personal narratives. For me, figuration becomes a way to examine stereotypes and to present a vision of dominance and submission, representing female power and fragility. The psychology of the figures and physicality of painted aluminum exemplifies exoticism and confrontational sensuality. I interrupt this hyper sexuality with powerful yet vulnerable facial expressions and attention to detail, creating paradoxically, a strong impression of unreality. I am reminding the viewer these paintings are my attempts to reconstruct personas from my fragmented memory, and determine the effects their experiences and insights have had on society. The “Mujeres de Colores” are placed on a ground of intense color. Visually, the color ground either subtracts or intensifies her skin color. The background color is anxious and significant, indicating impatience for social power structures to change. The lack of context is metaphorical; it portrays repressed cultural memories and the imbalance of social political power.
Mimesis
Mimesis of the psychological realities of incarceration. My images shift/ fluctuate between the positive and the negative, the concrete and the abstract. This work is the result of my interactions with the Utah State Executive branch of corrections and incarcerated inmates. For several years, I represented the governor; simultaneously, I created art with inmates. During this time, I realized that situations were not what they appeared to be and, indeed, often masqueraded as something quite different/ quite the opposite. In one moment, I would identify a thing precisely, and the next moment, watch it slip away: mimesis. While (all) architecture is a social system, complete with economic and psycho-political conditions, prison architecture additionally creates models for discipline, environments allowing constant observation and isolation. Paradoxically, the psychology of confined space is fluid, with boundaries always moving, displaced by the unconscious and the non-visual sensesThus, in these pieces, I invent spaces and imply/ insinuate situations which might happen inside them. The spaces, like the uniforms and other implements/ devices, are not literal but rather intellectual concepts and personal metaphors. For me, space is usually defined by human presence and motivation, but here humans have been replaced with objects implying both authoritarianism and sexual fetishism. Formally, my material application is firmly controlled, a technique which embodies a somber attempt at objectivity and avoidance of sentimentality. The format of the triptych calls to mind a medieval altarpiece, now infused with the contemporary merging of the spiritual and the psychological. The wings represent conceptual fashion designs, suggesting both the necessity for wearing the "right" clothing for the situation and the popularity of appropriating fashion from the disenfranchised. Fashion is architecture (for the body). Politically, my work is not a personal attack on the system; my stylization and use of color helps to maintain a detached approach to its content. However, the work raises questions about the use and abuse of power. I analyze political, social, and psychological norms/ premises which demand adaptation and assimilation of everyone outside its borders. (In prison, like everywhere else,) only those who conform to the norm are allowed to participate in/ can enjoy the privileges of power.
The name is from Minnesota Muti physic personality test that all inmates take upon entering the system. It asks multiple choice questions and one of the questions it asks are you afraid of doorknobs. The surface is mat the pigment is sitting on top to the surface, I put the viewer into the room. We are looking into a reflection to the back of the room. Lack of control of who enters the room.
In the system privilege is assigned through color. Red indicates a new arrival, Blue is minimum, Grey is a trustee- they have special privileges for good behavior, Brown is Medium, Yellow is maximum danger. A series of graduated outfits through which an inmate can move only by good appropriate behavior as defined by the authorities of the institution
I am not depicting the human being with a penetrating psychology, but a collective, mechanical concept, the system of control. The spatialization of the form represents a place for everyone and everyone in his place.
Deconstruction/Reconstruction
Deconstruction/Reconstruction was created after making art with a group of HIV Positive individuals. I became educated to the challenges and stereotypes that AIDS propagates. I wanted to understand how people live with the disease and maintain their identity. Because of medical advancements it is no longer a automatic death sentence, but is instead referred to as a chronic condition. Deconstruction/Reconstruction is my attempt to bridge the seen and the unseen, the known and unknown, becoming a vision of ordered relationships expressed as similarity in difference. By utilizing a modular grid through which the images undergoing continuous development, repetition acknowledges that not everything can be gotten at one go round, the more abstract the intent, the more views are required to assimilate. Homosexuality was officially classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a sociopathic personality disorder. In 1968 it was classified as a sexual deviation and finally in 1973 it was deleted as a mental illness.
This is Dwayne changing into a healthy Roxy. I have taken all context away, there are cast shadows on the ground indicating my use of a flash camera. He is changing the definition of who he is , he is no longer the disease.
The size of these panels references a computer monitor, computer viruses and the rhetoric of preventing infection uses the same concepts and terminology and language in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Each of the panels in one day.
Collaborative piece with participants of workshop who gave samples of non-life giving body fluid each week. The samples are attached to the canvas on a visible grid, the text is deciphered with the American Brail alphabet. The text reads “only through LIFE Giving body fluids”, but ironically, the only way it can be read is through touch. The grid is everywhere around us it extends in all directions to infinity, for me they indicate action or moving images
Delta 32 is a muted gene of the CCR5. This gene mutation is missing 32 base pairs or pieces of genetic code, this mutation alters the structure of the receptor so HIV cannot enter the cell. People with this mutation even when exposed repeatedly to the virus do not contract the disease. It is the same mutant gene that ancestors of survivors of the European Black Death may have had. Drawing is a my representation of what the delta mutation may look like. By leaving the formal structure of the geometrical building of the ellipse I represent the morphing of the CCR5 gene into Delta 32 through time.
Neighborhood
Based my neighborhood in Salt Lake City. It had long been a zone of contention, with many of the social services and shelters located within several city blocks it has been a place for large numbers of people in transition to gravitate to. It was a neighborhood that was vulnerable, the city condemned buildings allowing the developers to buy the properties below market value, forcing many of the services and tenants out including me for the good of the majority, or those with resources. My original intent when I began this series was to acknowledge and give witness to the individuals of the community. My process was dependent on photography, and I soon found out that the physicality of the camera created a separation between me and the community. I was confronted by people as to what the photos were for e.g. surveillance.
The figure is constructed through visualization. I purposefully manipulate the anatomy, adding to the feelings of vulnerability and strength. I am taking liberties with the perspective causing the picture plane to feel skewed and unbalanced. The manipulation of space forces these images to take on symbolic truth, meaning brushwork, line, composition and representative imagery now constitute formal metaphors for my experiences and events.
Dog eat dog, becomes a metaphor for dilemmas confronting the individual in modern society. The figure is subjected to divergent stress reflecting social and personal conditions. She becomes a power figure, the perspective takes on a mixed dream reality where time and space is vague, the capability of the mind to transcend the human condition.
The iconography of the Day of the Dead, an ancient Mexican holiday that celebrates life and death. Aztec’s celebrated this day at end of July first of August. Catholic priests moved it to coincide with Halloween so that it became a Christian celebration. I am using symbols of Mexican cultural myth “calaveras,” and raciest jargon, the Rio Grande refers to the River some cross to enter the US, the tracks become a spatial and symbolic border. The skeletons have their hands bound up against transparent glass reflecting cast shadows that are forever present, only one skeleton has the hearts, the strongest because if the weak do not survive the strong will take the hearts back to the family.
I am speaking to the viewer through empathy. I use hybrid figures devoid of individuality, and artificially colored complexions, as a means of expressing psychological states and altered consciousness. The ancient theme of the mask, hiding expression, resistance to his own fear, and to the compulsion he had previously submitted to, but fear of what or who.
Gandy Dancing
Gandy Dancing is a term that comes from the Gandy manufacturing company, maker of railroad ties and the dancing movements of the workers using them. Teams of eight to fourteen men worked to lay railroad tracks before machine driven tools made their jobs obsolete. My grandfathers all-Mexican crews with an English-speaking foreman used song as a tool to accomplish a specific task or to send messages to one another so as not to be understood by the foreman. The caller often had a musical background, he would use verse, spiritual ballads and blues. The calls were often spontaneous and inspired from immediate surroundings.