Noé Martínez

Proyectos Monclova presents The Shadow of the Mountain Has Tattoos by Noé Martínez.

This presentation, part of Art Week in Mexico City, explores Mexico’s colonial past, marked by slavery and human trafficking, with a focus on the Gulf of Mexico region—a land deeply connected to the artist’s ancestry. Drawing from historical documentation and a dreamlike, imaginative universe, Martínez creates works that intertwine his personal vision with a critique of how certain narratives have been historically silenced.

Through oil paintings on linen or copper plates, high-temperature ceramics, and wrought iron sculptures inlaid with silver and glass, Martínez offers a meditation on the human body as a living archive. His works convey the memory of three centuries of slavery within Huasteca culture, proposing art as a restorative act to confront and heal colonial wounds. The exhibition also establishes a dialogue between technical and traditional imagery, particularly in the documentation of archaeological objects and the pictorial and photographic representation of Indigenous peoples of Mexico since the 19th century.

For Martínez, the body serves as a vessel of untold histories and a witness to the landscapes inhabited by diverse native communities. The exhibition title references the shadow as a vital concept in the contemporary philosophies of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples and Martínez’s artistic practice. Here, shadow—interpreted as the absence of light—becomes a space for connecting with the realm of the dead, serving as a vehicle for healing and imagining new possibilities for life.

–Proyectos Monclova