Carlos Martiel

Performance Thursday, October 22, 6:30–7:30 p.m.

New York, NY – October 17, 2015. Robert Miller Gallery is pleased to present a new performance work by Carlos Martiel in conjunction with Nuevos Colores, a group exhibition of new art from Cuba.

In Legado (legacy), Martiel buries himself between two clay pots filled with coffee grounds from Jamaica and Haiti respectively, countries from which his grandparents imigrated to Cuba in the mid-1920s. As an extension of this personal history, the work ruminates on the flow of economic migrants created by colonialism, their legacy in the Caribbean, and human and environmental exploitation by Western powers. The resulting conditions have irrevocably marked the identity of groups inhabiting these countries and their economies.

Martiel’s performance will draw out this autobiographical experience to discuss the Caribbean diaspora as a social phenomenon, which is in part produced by exploitation of the land’s wealth. Along with the introduction of goods such as coffee, cotton, and sugar cane in the Caribbean came new forms of social relations, particularly slavery. The coffee that will fill the two clay pots in which Martiel will bury himself have been imported to the U.S. from Jamaica and Haiti to represent and investigate this phenomenon and the artist’s own Cuban identity.

(more info here)

Robert Miller Gallery | 524 West 26th Street