Walking in Essential rethinking, an exhibition by Narsiso Martinez, at the Museum of Latin American Art or MOLAA, you see a fascinating video of a farm worker projected onto the wall.
Working in the Central Valley of California picking grapes, the worker is fully covered with long sleeves, a hat, goggles, covering around the ears and neck to protect him from the protruding grapes. His hands plunge deep, in and out of the plants at a machine-like pace. But he is human. The accompanying Latin music adds to the astonishing speed of the car he works on. We witness skilled human labor surpassing any possible thought of automation.
Essential rethinking is organized in collaboration with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition and the Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA in San Diego. The ICA will host Martinez and his exhibition in February 2023.
In the tradition of socialist realism, his images reformulate power in the hands of the workers. With Labor Day approaching, Martinez talked about working in America News of random length.
“I feel like every day we should celebrate Labor Day,” Martinez said. “Work means many types of work, but working in the fields is really dangerous and fiscally draining. Clearly, not everyone is willing to work in the fields, given the history of US farmers
“From the beginning, the system abused the immigrants. they [also] abused Native Americans, slaves, and during the Bracero programs. The system continues to look for that community that is unfortunately disadvantaged – to label it – that [is] fiscally, very difficult and very dangerous.”
Martinez was born in Santa Cruz Papalutla, in Oaxaca, Mexico, a small town of just over 2,000 people. Oaxaca enjoys a rich creative environment in both art and food – as much as the value placed on its purity. Sixteen of Mexico’s total of 68 recognized indigenous groups are located in Oaxaca. Some of those groups were never conquered by Spain. Their foods remain untouched by European ingredients.
Coming from these surroundings to America and becoming a farm worker, one might wonder how he was struck by the difference in approach to food culture between these two environments. Martinez explained that he grew up in a small town, he knew nothing about art until he attended school in the United States. After arriving here at the age of 20, he spoke no English. As he saw it, he had to go to school and eventually his love of learning grew. In fact, he lights up when he talks about his art school experiences. Martinez, who lives in Long Beach, earned an associate of arts degree from Los Angeles City College. In 2012, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach and received a Master of Fine Arts from the same institution in 2018.
His drawings and mixed media installations include portraits and multi-figure compositions of farm workers set against agricultural landscapes and grocery store product box branding designs. Martinez noted that he was inspired by Vincent van Gogh.
“What amazed me the most were the scenes, the themes,” Martinez said. “He painted agricultural landscapes, poor people. Those images resonated with me perhaps because they made me feel nostalgic for my hometown, which I have not been to. [to] for many years.”
Martinez decided to attend art school. To pay for school, he had to work in the fields. It took him about nine farming seasons to complete his undergraduate and graduate programs.
Of those contrasts in food culture, Martinez said what stands out to him is the bottom line of all his experiences, “that farm workers are always cheated.” Martinez grew up in the fields of his hometown where his father would take him.
“Everything we planted there was for our own consumption,” he said. “This difference between growing food for our own consumption versus working in the fields for big corporations is where American agribusiness uses not only big machinery, but also various chemicals to grow crops.”
He said it seems like a continuing pattern, including in all other countries in Latin America and Europe, where people say that farm work is unskilled work, which is a myth, and that’s why farm workers should to pay as little money as possible. Farm workers need to work as soon as possible because many are contract workers.
Inspiration and representation in the everyday
When he got to CSULB, Martinez could no longer pay for school on his own. His siblings worked in Washington state, and they suggested Martinez work in the fields. They would provide shelter and food. All he had to do was work and save his paychecks. At first, it was just about money and work. When he went to art school for his graduate program, he realized he was part of a community, this group of people who were trying to maintain a balance — just as Martinez was trying to pay for school.
“We were dealing with the same issues,” he said, “like mistreatment, longer hours in the fields, backbreaking work.”
The way of life of farm workers and the way of life of farm owners was very different. He saw both sides and there was definitely, he said, a disadvantage. He decided to investigate further. He befriended more farmers, his colleagues.
“We hung out, I saw where they lived and heard their stories, really,” Martinez said.
Fruit Catcher IV / Fruit Collector IV, 2021-2022. Ink, charcoal, gold leaf in cardboard box. 20 x 15 ½ inches. Courtesy of the Artist and the Charlie James Collection
It was then that he decided to portray these struggles, “changes in lifestyles.” He recalled seeing beautiful paintings on cardboard during his undergraduate program, where he was told that the cardboard served as the skin of the subjects. One of Martinez’s professors at Cal State Long Beach made a cardboard painting that he exhibited that served as inspiration for him. This started the artist on his journey with cardboard. Martinez began painting over it and making sketches and studies. He made a drawing of the banana man in a banana box. (Martinez Stream The banana man the piece, widely exposed, shows a life-sized, partially transparent man standing in front of a background of more than a dozen boxes of flattened Dole bananas, banana in hand).
He elaborated, “Because we were seeing it [farmworkers] were represented in business and at the same time the rich [were also represented]. We had that conversation not only, thematically, changing lifestyles, but also the disadvantages of farmers versus business. [owners]. We are also talking about technique on another level, the comparison of [produce] labels and charcoal drawings and marks made and everything clicked. Then I started doing multiple portraits in multiple boxes. I started assembling boxes and created more complicated conversations. Then I collected sculptures [by] stacking [produce] boxes of stuff around them.”
His portrait series of linocuts are ghost prints. In them Martinez played with the idea of ghost prints because many of the farm workers are undocumented.
“Like we’re here, but we’re not.” he said. “The system loves us here for the hard work we do, but it doesn’t really want to give us all the benefits that every other worker can have. So we become ghosts. [This] it definitely matches the collage made by different label brands from different manufacturing companies.”
Legal tender
“I think it is important to appreciate our contribution to the economy, [what] farm workers or immigrants bring to the United States,” Martinez said.
Martinez’s mural Legal tender (paint, charcoal, gouache, gold leaf and collage in production boxes) at 23 feet, spanning the length of the gallery wall. He said the pattern he borrowed from the dollar bill is important. You see the four corners with the number one. And the central figure in the bill has been changed from a man to a woman, to emphasize the importance of the contribution of women, who he noted have historically been oppressed and disenfranchised. He worked with most of the people represented in the mural, or met them after he stopped working in the fields. His grandfather is also depicted wearing a cowboy hat. He came to the US in the 1960s to work in the Bracero program in the cotton and tomato fields. Martinez also immortalized a younger immigrant who used to come to work in the fields but died.
“During one of the seasons when he came to work, he got lost at the border,” Martinez said. “His family searched for him for about a year. When they cross the border, through the mountains and the desert, a lot of people just don’t make it.”
Martinez pointed to his gold graduation tassel at the top center of the mural, from his graduation cap.
“I wanted to include it to highlight education,” he said. “Education is important if you want to demand better wages and better working conditions and respect. It is important for people working in the fields to understand that if they cannot go to school and get an education, future generations should at least try.
“We have the guts when we’re prepared,” Martinez said. “[Education] represents the past, present and future. I want education to be the future. I want people to improve themselves.”
Details: molaa.org
