Art Talk: Narsiso Martinez

Hear from Narsiso Martínez (@narsisomartinez) as he discusses his personal history and the aesthetic influences informing Sin Bandana (2022), a recent acquisition by Phoenix Art Museum, on view now in the Katz Wing. ⁠
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About Narsiso Martínez ⁠
Born in Santa Cruz Papalutla, Oaxaca, Narsiso Martínez migrated to the United States when he was 20 years old. He attended Evans Community Adult School, working toward his high school diploma, and completed his GED in 2006 at the age of 29. Martínez creates sculptures and large multi-media installations, depicting richly detailed portraits of migrant farmworkers amid lush, agricultural landscapes on discarded cardboard produce boxes. His work is informed by his own experiences as a farmworker, spending summers picking produce in Washington state to support himself while studying at California State University Long Beach, where he earned both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts. Drawing on diverse influences from 1930s social realism to street art to his life growing up in a small Oaxacan farming town, Martínez combines charcoal, gouache, gold leaf, and collage to produce portraits of industrious field workers layered atop cardboard produce boxes. The powerful juxtaposition illustrates the dichotomy of the life of the worker versus the punchy text of the corporate food industry.⁠ ⁠
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Martínez’s work has been exhibited both locally and internationally and is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Museum of Latin American Art, University of Arizona Museum of Art, and Phoenix Art Museum, among others. Most recently, Martínez was the recipient of the Frieze Impact Award in 2023. ⁠