BODY, CONTEXT, AND MEMORY: CARLOS MARTIEL AT EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO

Room 110 of El Museo del Barrio is silent, and the scent of soil permeates the air.

In the center of the gallery, surrounded by stark white walls, the naked body of Carlos Martiel lies beneath an American flag stained with the blood of undocumented immigrants living in New York. His mother, Marta Sainz, walks barefoot toward a pile of soil near Carlos. She carefully scoops up the dirt, squeezing and compacting it before gradually burying her son with it.

Marta handles the soil with care, delicacy, and love. As he lies on the ground, Martiel wears only a resplendent durag, an accessory that, according to him, further contextualizes the performance. It reflects the Black population of Harlem, New York. The durag is crimson—a deep, blood-like red.

A group of visitors begins to gather around them, phones in hand, ready to record every moment. Yet, the hypnotic nature of the scene compels most to lower their screens, focusing instead on the process: Marta walking toward the soil; the soil covering Carlos’ body; the rise and fall of Carlos’ chest as he breathes beneath the dirt. When she finishes, Sainz leaves the room without uttering a word.

“In this project specifically, it was important for me to work with my mother,” Carlos comments when asked how he felt about sharing this moment with her. “[This performance] speaks to the violence suffered by young Black men in the United States as a result of police brutality,” he continues, “and it’s not just about the bodies that are murdered, but also about the disruption of life’s natural order. For certain racialized populations, it’s the mothers who are traumatically forced to bury their children, not the other way around.”

Creating alongside his family is part of a new phase that Martiel began earlier this year in Los Angeles with the installation Vaciamiento, in which his father participated. “Collaborating with them is something very valuable and special. It also opens a new chapter in my work and renews it right at this moment,” he comments.

The performance Sedimento, conceived in direct response to the violence faced by young Black men in the United States, was part of Martiel’s first solo exhibition in New York City, titled Cuerpo. The exhibition offers a deeply personal and contextually rich exploration of his most recent works.

Carlos recalls how “that artistic thing” always came naturally to him. “Since I was a child in Cuba, I liked to draw, to paint, to do cutouts, to make stamps,” Martiel reflects. “It was a way of abstracting myself from reality—or perhaps a way of better understanding reality and my situation as an individual in this world.”

Curiously, it is in the final corner of the room that we find the piece which takes us back to his memories and the origin of his work. Near the exit is a small painting depicting a human figure inside the belly of a pig. The exhibition catalogue, authored by curators Rodrigo Moura and Susanna V. Temkin, notes how this animal was introduced to the Americas by the Spanish, and in the drawing, both bodies seem to bleed, perhaps in allusion to what fate has in store for them. “That tiny last piece,” Carlos says, referring to the drawing, “is the beginning of what led me to create performance art.”

It was one of those early drawings he made while studying art in Cuba. In them, he used materials such as charcoal, wax, iron oxide diluted in vinegar, and—primarily—blood. His own blood. For this series of drawings, Martiel went to public clinics where nurses drew blood from him to use in his art. “At a certain point, they told me, ‘We are not going to give you anymore,’” he recalls. “It was a conflict for me because I couldn’t create the kind of work I wanted to do.”

It was during this period, as he grappled with his identity as a Black man in Cuba, that he chose to take control of his art. “I decided to use my body as both the object and subject of my conceptual interests,” he explains, “so I wouldn’t have to depend on anyone else to create art. That’s when I started doing performance art.”

For his exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, Martiel wanted the selected projects to resonate with the context in which they are presented. “When I left Cuba in 2012, I understood that context is the most important thing. I didn’t want to be a Cuban artist discussing Cuban issues while living outside Cuba. So, as an artist, I began to study the contexts in which my work is presented.”

Most of the 17 main pieces (excluding preparatory drawings) in the exhibition are part of recent projects Martiel created while living in the U.S., which he considers crucial for understanding how his art continues to engage with the legacies of colonialism in discussions of migration, race, and labor. “These works stem from the experience of being an immigrant, dealing with issues I’ve explored before, like racism, but within the context I find myself in at each moment,” Martiel explains. “Otherwise, my work would have no meaning.”

In this pursuit of contextuality, Carlos meticulously accompanies each piece with detailed notes, expanding on the meaning of his practice and offering a personal window into the origin of each work. Take, for example, Condecoración (2014), where his notes reveal: “I underwent surgery in which a 6-centimeter circumference of skin was removed. This tissue was then dissected by an art conservator and inserted into the disk of a gold medal, like those awarded by the Cuban government to select citizens. The technical details of the work were tattooed around the scar on my body, leaving a permanent record as a certificate of this medal on my skin.”

Among the works Martiel considers key to this survey are South Body (2019), where his skin is pierced by a small U.S. flag while he lies in a fetal position; Insignia VII (2024), the bloodied U.S. flag that presides over the gallery; and the Monument series, which began at El Museo del Barrio in 2021 with Monument I, where he remained naked on a pedestal covered in blood donated by migrant bodies: “Latinx, African Americans, feminized, indigenous, Muslims, Jews, queer and transsexuals—bodies considered minorities or marginalized in the United States by supremacist discourses,” he writes in his notes.

What captivates the visitor is the confrontational nature of Martiel’s work. His physicality transcends photographs or videos, compelling us to engage with the rawness of reality. One of the most visceral and demanding pieces is the one that gives the exhibition its title. In Cuerpo (2022), a project revisiting the lynching of Black people in the United States, Martiel is suspended from the ceiling of the Steve Turner gallery in Los Angeles, with a rope tied around his neck. The only thing preventing his suffocation is a group of people taking turns holding his body. “It was the first time I finished a performance and started to cry,” Carlos recalls. “These works stir something deep inside you; they are physically and emotionally exhausting.”

Martiel’s way of narrating realities—uncomfortable, intense, and often unsettling for the viewer—is his method of provoking reflection and remembrance. “My work seeks to transmit knowledge, to reflect on the reality I live as an individual,” Carlos muses. “It’s also about the lives of others, of bodies historically marginalized, oppressed, and discriminated against,” he continues. “I believe that memory, whether personal or collective, is the foundation of my work.”

Cuerpo: Carlos Martiel will be on view until September 1st at El Museo del Barrio, New York.