Gu'wá i'di / Casa sangre
Yael Martínez
Galley text Alejandro López López
Dates: July 27 - September 7, 2024
Opening: Saturday July 27, 2024 | 12 - 4 pm
In the symbolic territory, the blood house is our origin, the first home in the mother's womb before being born. Gu'wá i'di, a Mepha term, could be literally translated as a womb; however, metaphorically, it also represents a home fractured and bloodied by a wound.
Yael Martínez's work explores physical and emotional wounds, particularly those arising from the violence that persists in Mexico. Since 2013, Martínez has documented this situation, using photography as a ritual of denunciation and a means for personal and community healing.
The exhibition Gu'wá i'di / Casa sangre presents works from his first projects: La raíz oscura (2010-2012), La casa que sangra (2013-2016), and La raíz rota (2016-2019), which have been internationally recognized with awards such as the World Press Photo and the Eugene Smith Award. Also included are unpublished pieces from his most recent series, Somos el sueño de alguien que estuvo antes que nosotros (2023-2024), where the artist shows the daily life of indigenous communities. Through interventions, cuts, and folds, Martínez allegorically creates a transformation ritual and exploration of social and historical memory to understand the present.
Although a documentary, Yael Martínez's photography is self-referential, using symbolic elements that reflect the loneliness, damage, fear, absence, and pain caused by organized crime. The objects in his images force us to confront the decay and emptiness caused by those who are no longer there and the anguish and restlessness of those who remain in search of them.
The land and blood are present in his images, but the community is the true protagonist: a community that resists despite the loss, that works and lives from its roots, proud of its past, and fighting for its future.
Alejandro López López
Yael Martínez, Rezandera, Somos el sueño de alguien que estuvo antes que nosotros series, 2023-2024, Intervened archival pigment prints and pins, 52 x 79 cm (print), 78.5 x 104.5 cm (frame), Ed. 1/3 + 2 AP.
