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The Cuban “performance” artist Carlos Martiel was honored this Thursday with the first Maestro Dobel LatinX Art Award given by this brand of tequila and the Museo del Barrio in New York, the main Latino cultural institution in the United States, where he has been invited to present an exhibition in 2024.

With this award, the Museo del Barrio, which will celebrate its annual gala tonight, kicks off its own Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, which each fall in the country highlights the contribution of Latino communities in art and culture, but also in the economy and society in general.

In an interview with EFE, Martiel (Havana, 1989) highlighted the “amplified visibility” that recognition will bring to Latino artists and said that in his case it will allow him to continue his work in a way that would not have been possible “for not having the resources”.

In addition to receiving a $50,000 grant, the artist will present a project at the Museo del Barrio in the spring of next year, and he announced that it will be a “compendium” of new and previous works.

“The award is a great honor, and even more so as a performance artist who works with his body,” said Martiel, who identifies as “queer” and Afro-Latino and often submits himself to physical pain in radical performances with which he invites to reflect on the “oppressed and marginalized throughout history”.

The artist, trained at the “San Alejandro” National Academy of Plastic Arts and at the Cátedra Arte de Conducta, of the Cuban exponent of performative art Tania Bruguera, has been living in New York for years and has presented his “performances” and other works in museums around the world.

The executive director of the Museo del Barrio, Patrick Charpenel, noted that the jury decided to award this inaugural LatinX award to the Cuban for exploring “beautifully the complexity and subtlety of racism and racialization, gender, immigration, and the legacy of colonialism in the Americas,” in a note.

Martiel, who left his country in 2012, assured that the “need for expression” is what led him to be an artist: “I started working with my body because I needed to express myself, but I couldn’t do an obvious job that put me in certain risks, so I decided to do a kind of minimal performance, no words,” he said.

Performances like those of the “Monument” series, in New York in 2021: on one occasion, he remained naked and handcuffed on a pedestal at the Guggenheim, and on another, he appeared at the Museo del Barrio also naked and covered in blood donated by minority groups or marginalized by “supremacist discourses” in the US.

Or other more extreme ones, such as “No Man’s Land”, at the Galleria Continua in Paris, in 2022, in which he showed himself naked, with his chest pierced with the metal poles of eight mini flags, those of the colonizing countries of Africa. .

“That is the power of my work, with the few elements that I manage I can communicate and say things,” he added.

Martiel said that leaving Cuba for the world and residing in New York has been a “great experience” that has transformed his life in every way since he has “everything at his fingertips,” which has opened his work to new topics. and problems beyond those that concerned him in the “context” of the island.

The artist said that he is still in contact “from a distance with part of the artistic community” in Cuba but acknowledged that it will be difficult to return to work there, as he verified when he returned for an exhibition in 2014: “I don’t have to stick to what he says instruction, an organization or a government”.

The Museo del Barrio gala, which raises funds and includes an auction, also honors this year the Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco for her Excellence in the Arts and the Mexican businessman Juan Beckmann, majority owner of José Cuervo tequilas, for his Outstanding Sponsorship of the Arts.

2023-09-07 21:16:00
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