Narsiso Martinez

 

Pictured here is mixed-media artist Narsiso Martinez’s piece entitled, “Resist” (2024). This piece features a young man in a graduation gown on a gold background. This portrait sits in the center of a frame and canvas that are both made up of a cardboard strawberry box. This piece is one of ten works in his 2024 collection Joyfully Grown. The young man is adorned with an honorable gold medal, cords, and a stole. He wears a graduation cap, which encircles his head, calling to mind a halo. The combined elements of gold and piety convey honor and value toward education.

 

Narsiso Martinez was born in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1977 and came to the United States at 20 years old. His drawings and mixed media installations work as creative strategies of resistance, calling attention to the primarily Hispanic and/or Mexican field workers who make up the majority of the United States’s fresh produce industry’s workforce. In his bio, Martinez writes: 

 

Drawn from his own experience as a farmworker, Martinez’s work focuses on the people performing the labors necessary to fill produce sections and restaurant kitchens around the country. Martinez’s portraits of farmworkers are painted, drawn, and expressed in sculpture on discarded produce boxes collected from grocery stores. In a style informed by 1930s-era Social Realism and heightened through use of found materials, Martinez makes visible the difficult labor and onerous conditions of the “American farmworker,” itself a compromised piece of language owing to the industry’s conspicuous use of undocumented workers” (Martinez).

 

In his work, Martinez incorporates a heterogeneous methodology to call attention to the often ignored and marginalized workers providing the physical labor for the United States’ food system. Throughout his pieces, he depicts a variety of individuals, drawn on the discarded cardboard produce boxes, with distinct characteristics. This approach calls attention not only to the workers performing the labor, but even more importantly, to the multiplicitous and heterogeneous nature of individual worker’s lived experiences.

 

In “Resist,” for example, Martinez calls attention to the value of education through his detailed portrayal of a single individual excelling in academia. His graduation cap and gown, stole, medal, and cords all point to success, highlighting not only the esteem of education, but also this specific individual’s immense achievements. In her analysis of this piece on Dovetail, a contemporary art magazine, art and culture writer Kate Mothes writes, “By elevating the humble cardboard box to the status of picture frame and depicting hardworking people in their esteemed individuality, Martinez scrutinizes who and what society values” (2024). Martinez uses his art as a creative method of resistance in order to call attention to not only the concealment of farm workers' labor, but also the concealment of farm workers’ individual agency and individuality.

 

Martinez’s use of this specific strawberry box, both as a canvas and a frame, calls attention to the strawberry agribusiness industry. More specifically, the portrait of the young man within the frame of the box calls attention to the people who work for the strawberry agribusiness, an industry known for its exploitative labor practices towards their primarily Hispanic and/or Mexican field workers. By centering the individual graduate and his achievements within the frame, Martinez centers the workers’ agency and lived experience in the context of the United States strawberry industry’s exploitative labor practices.