Cristóbal Martínez
Cristóbal Martínez, PhD is an artist-scholar who co-founded the artist-hacker ensemble Radio Healer in 2003; joined the internationally acclaimed artist collective Postcommodity in 2009; and co-created, with post-Mexican artist-composer Guillermo Galindo, the experimental electronic music ensemble Red Culebra in 2018. Martínez has dedicated his life and career to interdisciplinary collaboration in contemporary art, and continues his work within these groups.
Martínez is a 2023-2024 U.S. Latinx Awardee, a 2024-2025 United States Artist Fellow, and has exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Contour Biennial 2011, Mechelen, BE; Adelaide International 2012, AUS; 18th Biennale of Sydney, AUS; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; 2017 Whitney Biennial, NY; Art in General, NY; documenta14, Athens, GR and Kassel, DE; the 57th ed. Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; San Francisco Art Institute, CA; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Remai Modern Museum, Saskatoon, SK; Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA; the 3rd ed. of düsseldorf photo+, Biennale for Visual and Sonic Media, Düsseldorf, DE; The Renshaws, Brisbane, AUS; and the historic land art installation Repellent Fence at the U.S./Mexico border, Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, SON.
Education
PhD, Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Postcommodity
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary art collective comprised of Cristóbal Martínez (Genizaro, Manito, Xicano), and Kade L. Twist(Cherokee). Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multi-ethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever-increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere.
Area of study
Postcommodity: We Lost Half the Forest and the Rest Will Burn This Summer
Using their own borderlands-rasquache instruments and regalia, Postcommodity performed song variations from their latest album We Lost Half the Forest and the Rest Will Burn This Summer. Recounting an ongoing cycle of decay in a desert from the view of its flora and fauna, hacked electronics, voices, rattles, animal calls, and Mexican whistles dirge through the only path to the end.
South By North Is Also North By South - 2021
Postcommodity’s pyramid is composed of barrels used to contain hazardous materials, such as nuclear waste. This stacked formation is similar to how such barrels are commonly stored, in warehouses or below ground. Throughout the Americas, Indigenous communities are disproportionatly impacted by resource extraction and materials storage, which often take place on or in close proximity to Indigenous territories.
Let Us Pray For the Water Between Us - 2020
Let Us Pray For the Water Between Us is a site-specific installation responding to the forced displacement of Indigenous communities and the complexity of human relationships bound by shared sources of water that are increasingly difficult to protect and preserve from waste and contamination. For this imposing work Postcommodity transforms a 2200 gallon chemical storage tank, primarily used for industrial farming, into a self-playing percussive and resonant instrument.