Noé Martínez

Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I (Study of Trafficking of Persons 1525–1533 I)

2019

Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I (Study of Trafficking of Persons 1525–1533 I), 2019

As he investigates the forms that slavery took through different events that occurred during the sixteenth century in the Huasteca region of Mexico, Noé Martínez tells, in a non-linear narrative, the history of human trafficking in Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I (Study of Trafficking of Persons 1525–1533 I). Both the departure of Huasteco Indians from the Americas, and the arrival of Africans from Cape Verde, Angola, Congo and Mozambique unravel in Martinez work as a story that has remained sealed in the colonial archives, and that continues under different guises in contemporary times.

Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I is part of a series made of interventions in tanned leathers that refer to the exchange of human beings for pack animals and cattle in the Caribbean Sea. The back of the leather is stamped with forms mimicking those designs used to brand the bodies of the slaves, while the front carries name inscriptions on painted strips and obsidian stones. This painting follows up on the series of seascape canvases El lenguaje, la lengua y el esclavo congénito, and stands as the closing piece of the artist’s research on colonial enslavement.

Noé Martínez’s practice has questioned the relationship between art, politics and participation, by bringing together biographical accounts of his family’s experience in his native Michoacán, manifestations of ancient indigenous cultures of the region, along with contemporary social mobilizations. Engaging in depthly with local indigenous identities from a contemporary perspective, Martínez’s work asserts the relevance of personal narratives facing Western global history. His work incorporates the evolution of language in relation to the history of the European colonization of Latin America, the vindication of ethnicity in the political processes carried out by the indigenous populations of Mexico, and the political power of memory. His research has recently extended to the colonial history of the Gulf of Mexico, and more specifically the slave trade during the first years of the European invasion. In his paintings, both the exit of Huasteco natives and the entry of Africans from Cape Verde, Angola, Congo, and Mozambique are unraveled as a story that was put away in the high sea, the colonial documents, and the continuation of colonial relations in everyday life.

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Noé Martínez Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I (Study of Trafficking of Persons 1525–1533 I)

Noé Martínez

Relación de tráfico de personas 1525-1533 I (Study of Trafficking of Persons 1525–1533 I)