Out of TownerFidencio Martinez
Maps : Transcending Navigation by Leah Sandler
Two stooping fi gures emerge from a chaotic mass of delicately cut paper resembling chain-link fence , nets , and dissected roadmaps . The fi gures appear to reap or sow something from the heaps below them . They remain anonymous , features replaced by the vein-like intersecting lines on maps . They are frozen in their gestures , held in place on a gallery wall with round , red map tacks . Fidencio Martinez ’ s installation , El Hielo / I . C . E , ( referring to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement ) seems conscious of the arbitrary boundaries humans have created to represent our political , cultural , and geographic differences . Martinez , born in Oaxaca , Mexico and raised in North Carolina , is informed by the traditional crafts of Oaxaca as well as the political and socioeconomic conditions of immigration between the U . S . and Mexico .
As the 2016 presidential election draws near and Republican candidate Donald Trump continues to espouse nationalist rhetoric , including the proposed construction of a wall between the U . S . and Mexico , Martinez ’ s work seems increasingly relevant . His chosen materials — maps ,
El Hielo / I . C . E ., cut maps , prints , map pins , acrylic , and ink manipulated and cut to resemble fences , as well as the human fi gure — implicate the constructed nature of geopolitical borders , as well as their very real implications on individual lives .
“ It seems it is only from the position of being out of place that we can attempt to develop new skill — perceptual and cognitive — to map the new hyperspaces wherein we have to survive ...”
— Miwon Kwon
Historically , maps were drawn by cartographers who attempted to convey spatial reality in a two-dimensional form , making symbols corresponding to the expansiveness of our planet ’ s surface , porous delineations between cultures as lines on paper . Maps were a model of reality , however crude . As technology advanced , our ability to represent coastlines and the physical realities of the surface of the planet improved . However , out of this representation of our physical space , we have created a simulacrum which precedes reality . Accepting the map as reality itself ( forgetting that it is merely a model of our constantly evolving and indescribable reality ) we have drawn lines on two-dimensional surfaces and then attempted to enforce these lines in real space with armed guards and constructed barriers . By cutting the silhouettes of human fi gures out of mapped representations
Plegaria Muda , wood , concrete , earth , and grass
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