9 janvier – 4 février 2023 – Galeries André Arsenec & La Véranda
Commissariat Olivia Maëlle Breleur
Artists: Jean-François Boclé, Ernest Breleur, Stephanie Brossard, Thierry Fontaine, Séphora Joannes, Valérie John, Shivay La Multiple, Mirtho Linguet, Louisa Marajo, Carlos Martiel, Myriam Mihindou, Gabriel Moraes Aquino, Borgial Nienguet-Roger, jérémie priam, Tabita Rezaire, Fannie Sosa.
(more info here)
Tropiques-Atrium | 6 Rue Jacques Cazotte, Fort-de-France 97200, Martinica
October 7, 6 – 8 pm.
Please join artist Carlos Martiel for the premier of his durational performance, Arquitectura para un cuerpo (2022). This work is a site-specific response to the history of Western museums, their relationships to imperial expansion, and their history in objectifying and displaying human subjects and artworks from colonized and racialized nations.
(more info here)
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art | 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, AR, 72712.
October 1–29, 2022
Steve Turner is pleased to present Peso, the gallery’s fourth solo exhibition by Carlos Martiel. The exhibition will feature recent works which encompass photography, video, sculpture, drawing, installation and performance. For the first time, Martiel has created performance works expressly for the video format, something that he intends to pursue more in the future. While each work is visually distinct from the others, all bear Martiel’s unmistakable vocabulary in which his bodily presence, that of a queer Afro-Latino man, is highlighted within a context of cultural violence. As suggested by the exhibition’s title, each work conveys conflicting interactions with weight. In some, a heavy object is carried or dragged by Martiel; in one, Martiel’s body is the weight that requires the support of others, and in another, a once light American flag is weighed down by the density of dry blood. According to Martiel, “weight is more than mere gravity holding our bodies down; it is the incontrovertible force that binds, traverses and crushes our flesh into submission, alienation or dependency. It exists in our public monuments, in corpses hanging from trees, in shackles and in banners. It exists in our history and it is present in 2022.”
During the exhibition’s opening on October 1, 2022, Martiel will perform his durational piece Time for the first time. The performance will be recorded and presented as a video during the run of the exhibition.
(more info here)
Steve Turner | 6830 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90038
By Clara Maria Apostolatos for The Latinx Project
To visual artist Carlos Martiel, recording performance art is much like creating an archive.
“I consider my performance art like an archive in itself, in terms of its documentation. The photographic and video documentation becomes registered like an archive of the times I am living through, as well as an archive of the problems of the times I have had to live.”¹
In drawing out the relationship between archival and performance practices, Martiel invites us to consider how performances become transferred into tangible records of the artist’s creative practice as well as their political moment. And while Martiel here speaks of archiving performances, his close friend and visual artist Camilo Godoy is more interested in performing archives and the information disclosed in them.
“We can create new histories through performance, especially when considering the violence of history. There are so many events that have not been documented by photographs or video but live from accounts of oral histories—of people talking and describing what they experienced. To me, performance is a device that allows us to examine something that is never seen but maybe read about or heard from.”²
Together, the work of artists Camilo Godoy and Carlos Martiel capture the immediacy of generating and reanimating collective memory. Evoking the interrogative forms of the counter-archive, Godoy and Martiel question and disrupt conventional narratives of the historically disenfranchised, among them the Latinx and queer community. Rather than present objective or official views of history, the artists draw upon personal memory and cultural heritage to offer subjective and contingent reports of history. The artists enact critical interrogations and revivals of past narratives through aesthetic strategies I heuristically describe here as affective touch and corporeality.
(more info here)
September 9, 2022 – January 29, 2023.
The lands that touch the Caribbean Sea have become inextricably intertwined, over the centuries, with the rest of the globe, including parts of Africa, India, China, Japan, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. The Caribbean’s ecologies, economies, and cultures have been fundamentally shaped by these relationships, which have involved shifting empires and colonization, travels across bodies of water both voluntary and forced, and the bodies of water themselves.
Breathe into the Past: Crosscurrents in the Caribbean takes its title from a line in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s 2020 book Dub: Finding Ceremony, which is about channeling ancestral knowledge toward understanding Caribbean histories and navigating Caribbean futures. The twelve featured artists in this exhibition hail from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, coastal Colombia, and beyond. Their artworks offer insights into the complex histories that have influenced the present—sometimes on grand scales, at other times in subtler yet still undeniable ways. They acknowledge human and nonhuman entanglements, situate contemporary politics in spaces of coloniality and imperialism, and celebrate long histories of resistance and perseverance. They integrate a broad range of materials—vintage saris, codfish skins, bougainvillea thorns, sugar—into sculptures, books, photographs, films, and more, so as to speak to histories of migration and diaspora (the scattering of peoples from their homelands). In this way, the works and the artists who made them offer poetic responses to often-marginalized histories.
Artists included in the exhibition:Hulda Guzmán, Uva de Playa painting
Firelei Báez, Albert Chong, Andrea Chung, Maksaens Denis, Hulda Guzmán, Renluka Maharaj, Suchitra Mattai, Carlos Martiel, Javier Orfón, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, María Isabel Rueda, and Nyugen Smith
(more info here)
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center | 30 W Dale St, Colorado Springs, CO 80903
September 24, 2022 — January 15, 2023
In the Mind’s Eye: Landscapes of Cuba examines how Cuban and U.S. painters active largely from 1850 to 1910 projected and injected ideas about Cuba into landscape painting as a reflection of political, social, and ideological changes in both countries. While some artists depicted a pastoral, serene Cuba, others acknowledged the history of race and slavery and created works that equate landscape to nationalism. Multilayered readings found in historic landscapes pictured by U.S. artists reflect the complex ways in which Cuba has been viewed and imagined by its skeptical northern neighbors. U.S. artists William Glackens, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, and Willard Metcalf will be featured alongside contemporary artists such as Juan Carlos Alom, María Magdalena Campos Pons, and Juana Valdés. While works by Emilio Perez and Lilian Garcia Roig respond to historic depictions of landscape, while works by Carlos Martiel and Carrie Mae Weems intervene in the historical tropes and ideologies present in the landscapes featured in the exhibition. Other artists featured in the exhibition include Esteban Chartrand, Miguel Melero Rodriguez, Valentín Sanz Carta, Yoan Capote, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Diana Fonseca Quiñones, Alejandro Campins, and Glexis Novoa.
In the Mind’s Eye is accompanied by a catalogue published by Giles, Ltd. featuring essays by Jorge Duany, Katherine Manthorne, and interviews with artists Juana Valdés and Carlos Martiel conducted by Donette Francis and Elvia Rosa Castro.
This exhibition and catalogue are made possible by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional generous support for the exhibition is provided by Ramón and Nercys Cernuda and the Gazitua family.
(more info here)
Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum | 10975 SW 17th St, Miami, FL 33199.
TONE invites you to the opening of Itutu: Diddy Ain’t Invent The Remix, an exhibition that explores the variety of swag birthed from Black culture through the ability to remix and reinvent themselves and the meaning of the world around them.
From August 6th- October 15th, the exhibit will welcome the community to come out and be inspired by Black folks’ works.
Curator of the show, Nic[o] Aziz, from New Orleans, will be featuring his work alongside artists: Regina Agu, Abdi Farah, Jean-Marcel Saint-Jacques, Oski Awoyo, Amanda Adams, Ifátùmínínú Bamgbàlà Arẹ̀sà, Big Chief Romeo Bougere, Libby Bowman, Every Nigga Deserves, Carlos Martiel, Brittney Boyd Bullock, and Tangela “Pussi Dusse” Mathis.
In Yoruba the word “itutu” translates to cool. This exhibition explores the plethora of drip that exists within Black culture, organically. Reinventing the definition of what coolness is and defining it by who we are.
Put this into perspective, in every time period Black folks have continued to staple time and mark it with their creativity, originality, and rejuvenation in every aspect of our lives.
Black folks create new meanings to old words, to better describe our culture.
In Memphis “junt” can translate into anything: a person, place, thing, or idea. Junt was created by the creative culture that Black folks organically exercise everytime we open our mouths.
“Itutu” means Black people, as we continue to be the blueprint that inspires the world around us.
(more info here)
TONE | 2234 Lamar Ave, Memphis, TN , 38114.
SEP 16 – JAN 15, 2023
INDECENCIA brings together a cohort of queer/rare* artists from Latin America and/or of Latin American descent and living in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean or in-between spaces/identities, whose praxes center on performance art and ephemeral actions. From the perspective of several generations, countries, and sociopolitical contexts, these artists invite us to consider Latinidad/Latinxidad and its relationship to religion, enfleshment, and sexuality. Their inquiries extend—through videos, props, scripts, costumes, and other channels—to the disjointed corpus of an entire hemisphere where, for many, the colonized and the colonizer can easily wrestle within a single body.
INDECENCIA engages the indecent theology envisioned and incarnated by Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952–2009), whose unorthodox writing digs deep into sexual dissidence and gender and class analysis. Althaus-Reid’s theology, departing from Catholic Liberation theology, calls for “lifting the skirts of God” to unclothe patriarchy and its oppressing ramifications. Her view of the indecent, and the act of turning something indecent, dismantles normality to not only formulate new questions but produce new answers. Concomitantly, the exhibition connects with the decolonial theory of Walter Mignolo and the idea of “Latin America” as the colonial/imperial project that has shaped the region.
Who is included in or excluded from the Latin/Latinx American and “American” colonial-capitalist corporate enterprise? With this in mind, INDECENCIA remains aware of the potentialities imbued in Latinidad/Latinxidad in relationship to individuals and groups representative of dissimilar backgrounds and yet sharing common histories/herstories/theirstories of European colonization and US imperialism and who are searching for self-determination. And this is where theologizing without underwear, bringing rosaries into the lesbian bar, or talking about God while having sex with the “wrong” partner—performing the sacred with the forbidden—turn into quite indecent and liberatory projects.
This exhibition is dedicated to the late Marcella Althaus-Reid.
Participating artists: Luis A., Arantxa Araujo, Arthur Avilés, Nao Bustamante, Susana Cook, Anna Costa e Silva and Nina Terra, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Marga Gomez, Félix González Torres, Nadia Granados (La Fulminante), Noelia Quintero and Rita Indiana, Carlos Martiel, Carlos Leppe, Elizabeth “MACHA” Marrero, Ivan Monforte, Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, Charles Rice-González, Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe, Carmelita Tropicana & Uzi Parnes & Ela Troyano, and Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis.
Curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles.
*“Raro” is the curator’s translation of “queer” in Spanish. “Raro” means strange, weird, or unusual.
(more info here)
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art | 26 Wooster St, New York, NY 10013
26/06/2022 — 28/08/2022
CARLOS MARTIEL, LEILA ALAOUI, ALEJANDRO CAMPINS, NIKHIL CHOPRA, BERLINDE DE BRUYCKERE, ANISH KAPOOR, ORNAGHI & PRESTINARI, SUSANA PILAR, KIKI SMITH, MARTA SPAGNOLI, PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU.
(more info here)
GALLERIA CONTINUA (LES MOULINS) | 46 Rue de la Ferté Gaucher, 77169 Boissy-le-Châtel, France.
Saturday, June 18, 2022
5 to 7pm
Carlos Martiel will debut a new performance, Alter ego, to celebrate the culmination of Articulating Activism. This interactive, durational piece will reflect on the construction of heteronormative masculinity and its implications for people of color through the artist’s corporeal presence as a queer Black man.
We’re pleased to welcome Martiel back to The 8th Floor. With works currently on view in Articulating Activism, Martiel’s Alter ego will mark the artist’s second new performance at the gallery after his 2016 Maze.
The 8th Floor will be open from 11am to 4pm on June 18, reopening from 5 to 7pm for the performance. RSVPs are required here. Please find our current Covid-19 policy, accessibility info, and more details on visiting here.
Carlos Martiel (born 1989, Havana) lives and works in New York and Havana. He graduated in 2009 from the National Academy of Fine Arts “San Alejandro,” in Havana. Between the years 2008-2010, he studied in the Cátedra Arte de Conducta, directed by the artist Tania Bruguera. Martiel’s works have been included in the Biennial of the Americas, USA; 4th Vancouver Biennale, Canada; 14th Sharjah Biennial, UAE; 14th Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador; 57th Venice Biennale, Italy; Casablanca Biennale, Morocco; Biennial “La Otra”, Colombia; Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom; Pontevedra Biennial, Spain; Havana Biennial, Cuba. He has had performances at The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York; USA, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; USA, El Museo del Barrio, New York; USA, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; La Tertulia Museum, Cali, Colombia; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Quito, Ecuador; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH), Houston, USA; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia (MACZUL), Maracaibo, Venezuela; Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy; Nitsch Museum, Naples, Italy. He has received several awards, including the Franklin Furnace Fund in New York, USA, 2016; “CIFOS Grants & Commissions Program Award” in Miami, USA, 2014; “Arte Laguna” in Venice, Italy, 2013. His work has been exhibited at The São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil; The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, USA; Zisa Zona Arti Contemporanee (ZAC), Palermo, Italy; Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, USA; Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba; among others. His works are in public and private collections such as The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami; Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro.
(more info here)
The 8th Floor | 17 West 17th Street, NYC (Between 5th and 6th Avenues)
