Americans have a unique disconnect with our food. More than 10% of the workforce works in the agricultural sector, but few ordinary people get a true understanding of (let alone witness) the number of people involved in growing, harvesting, packaging, and ultimately putting dinner on the table. Given that many farms, restaurants and other food-related businesses employ undocumented people, these industries have also been targeted for deportation, further pushing those who keep them in the shadows.
For Narciso Martinez, this important labor has long been the central point of his practice. The Oaxaca-born artist is known for painting tender portraits on produce boxes, using discarded packaging as a metaphor for how we allocate value. Martinez often worked from photographs, depicting people he knew and even those he worked with in the fields when he first immigrated to the United States.
In a recent show with Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, Martinez stacked a series of strawberry boxes to create a towering double-sided totem. One depicts a masked man grabbing a handful of asparagus, while another depicts a mechanical picker. Both crops grow close to the ground and require a lot of labor to harvest. By including wheeled equipment, Martinez once again draws attention to the ways in which agricultural labor is often overlooked, as well as the additional dehumanization of the agricultural process when machines replace humans.
Other works include a massive wall installation featuring a worker with a hood over his face, the stars and stripes of the American flag twisted around his neck. The lenses of his sunglasses reflected a group of people gathered around a table, many holding drinks as if in a toast. A statement from the gallery said: “Martinez’s style was influenced by the social realism of the 1930s and was enhanced by the use of found materials to make visible the difficult labor and onerous conditions of ‘American farm workers’, which itself was a language of compromise due to the industry’s apparent use of undocumented workers.”
Martinez’s work is on display los enquinteros Taking place at Ballroom Marfa, the event has been extended until March 29th. Learn more about him on Instagram.
(tag translation) cardboard
