OCMA (Orange County Museum of Art)

Mexican artist Noé Martínez focuses on the impact of Mexico’s colonial past. The exhibition centers on the little-known history of enslaved African people by Spanish colonizers in the Huasteca region of Mexico during the sixteenth century. The installation consists of collaged drawings mounted on wooden structures that emulate the cramped space allotted to each body aboard slave ships. The drawings and collaged elements together present a complex and poetic representation of this history. Poems visible on the back of the drawings further evoke a sense of loss as well as a fear of a future that includes forgetting a past cultural identity.