In Brutal Ordeals, a Performance Artist Embodies the Oppressed
It’s hard to look away from Carlos Martiel’s feats of endurance and self-harm. Does his sacrifice help us understand a legacy of racist violence?
May 23, 2024
Carlos Martiel’s “Cuerpo” (2022), a video documentation of performance at Steve Turner, Los Angeles, now on view at El Museo del Barrio. Don Lewis
Confronting you head-on are a hanging flag, and a man in danger of hanging.
The flag, unfurled vertically between two white structural columns in a gallery at El Museo del Barrio, resembles the stars and stripes of the United States, except the blue and red are black, and the white has been dyed a gristly pink — stained with blood, according to the exhibition materials, given by undocumented immigrants living in New York.
