I had never walked so much or traveled so far as when my brothers and I first came to the United States from Honduras. What I remember the most about that day was my first Thanksgiving dinner. I tasted it and thought it was the best food I had ever eaten. I was 13 years old when I first encountered my American Me.
As an artist living and working in Miami, the context of my experience as an immigrant varies daily. This project reflects on the awareness of and the implications of assimilation for an individual immersed in a dominant foreign culture. It questions estrangement and displacement between people of different cultural identities, specifically within a city recognized as "the crossroads of the Americas."
Our journey from Honduras took us 30 days. We came walking, riding on buses, and hiding in the backs of trucks. After arriving in Tijuana, we gathered at a four-story apartment building where we could watch the border from our hiding place. Countless people were waiting to come over to the States. At the time, it reminded me of a supermarket parking lot full of strangers from many different countries, each desperately hoping to buy a taste of freedom when they crossed the frontier. It was like a big adventure for me.
I arrived in Miami in August 1994, just in time to start the new school year. My mother enrolled me at Booker T. Washington Jr. High School and bought me a new pair of shoes at the local Payless store. But when I walked into class the first day, the other kids were wearing Nikes and Filas and started making fun of and bullying me. One boy followed me after school, stole my new shoes, and sent me home barefoot. That experience toughened me up, and soon, the AmericanMe side of my character became a more pronounced part of myself.
Martinez's mixed-media work reflects on his childhood memories and dreams, which he recorded in his sketchbooks. Through his work, he conveys his anxieties and experiences of dislocation by using spiritual symbols derived from ancient Indigenous peoples and making expressionistic marks. He builds a visionary fantasy world with fanged beasts and lurid characters that bear emotionality, recounting often uncomfortable or violent conditions.
This exhibition focuses on Martinez's recent works exploring his fascination with Norman Rockwell (1894-1978). Norman Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator known for his iconic depictions of American culture created for The Saturday Evening Post and with a range of favorite subjects, including nuclear families, mischievous children, and small-town life. His work embodied an idyllic vision of rural life.
Martinez recontextualizes and reimagines Rockwell's world from his vantage point, utilizing book reproductions of Rockwell's work and creating painted mixed-media collages that incorporate his own macabre-fanged beast characters. This juxtaposition of narratives evokes and questions a contemporary notion of what it means to be American: the artist's American Me.
