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Jan 312018
 

By Melina Paris for RANDOM LENGTHS NEWS

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This past Saturday, the Cuban-born, New York-based artist, Carlos Martiel, stood unclothed, alone in a dark room. A motion sensor triggered by people walking in, illuminated a constellation on the artist’s body.

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Stars from the flags of countries in the Western Hemisphere were fixed with string to his body. The artist stood completely still. Various- sized stars on his body and four more on the floor in front and behind him were lit in iridescent blue.

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The constellation represented a conceptual map in which no state is superior to another. Instead, they come together within a unified field. The visual of Martiel’s nakedness cloaked in galactic darkness combined with the unprejudiced constellation that was sewn on to him was striking in its beauty; it also implied peace and fixed nature. The performance was called América.

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Another perspective is that the performance asserted the legacy and history of the Western Hemisphere as if it’s written into the skin, indeed, into the very DNA of those of us rooted in the New World.

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