Mexican Artist Noé Martínez examines the power of relationships that began with human trafficking during the era of the Spanish Viceroyalty in Mexico in the sixteenth century. Deeply interested in the traces left by colonialism on his ancestors, Martínez depicts the physical and psychological traumas of enslavement and brings to light the unexpected encounters enslaved people from the Caribbean had with Spanish and indigenous Mexican culture. Martínez’s drawings and sculptures reference the oppression of both the indigenous people of the Huasteca region of Mexico and the slaves brought to the region as cheap labor. The installation, fraught with both reality and fiction, is inspired by historic images, photographs, and texts as well as collective memories of forgotten and forbidden stories and the artist’s own imagination.

Guest curated by Ruth Esteves