{"id":182454,"date":"2025-06-14T00:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T00:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182454\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T00:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T00:44:11","slug":"punctured-photographs-by-yael-martinez-illuminate-the-daily-ruptures-of-systemic-violence-colossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182454\/","title":{"rendered":"Punctured Photographs by Yael Mart\u00ednez Illuminate the Daily Ruptures of Systemic Violence \u2014 Colossal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mexican state of Guerrero lies on the southern Pacific coast and is home to the popular tourist destination of Acapulco. It\u2019s also one of the nation\u2019s most violent areas due to drug trafficking and cartel presence, and is one of six states that account for nearly half of the country\u2019s total homicides.<\/p>\n

For artist and photographer Yael Mart\u00ednez<\/a>, the reality of organized crime became more pronounced when, in 2013, three of his family members disappeared. He began to speak with others in his community who had experienced similar traumas and to connect threads across the borders of Mexico to Honduras, Brazil, and the United States.<\/p>\n

\"small \u201cItzel at home,\u201d Guerrero, Mexico<\/p>\n

Luci\u00e9rnagas, which translates to fireflies, comes from Mart\u00ednez\u2019s meditation on this extreme brutality that \u201cinfiltrates daily life and transforms the spirit of a place,\u201d a statement says. Now published in a volume by This Book Is True, the poetic series punctures dark, nighttime photographs with minuscule holes. When backlit, the images bear a dazzling constellation of light that distorts the images in which violence isn\u2019t depicted but rather felt.<\/p>\n

In one work, for example, a man holding a firework stands in a poppy field, a perforated cloud of smoke enveloping his figure. He\u2019s performing an annual ritual on the sacred hill of La Garza, and the setting exemplifies a poignant contradiction between ancestral cultures and a crop that has been subsumed by capitalism and is essential to cartel power. A statement elaborates: <\/p>\n

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We don\u2019t see death in Luci\u00e9rnaga, but its omnipresence is felt throughout, lingering in the shadows of each photograph. Each image painfully underwritten by the result of a calculated violence that visited unseen and undetected, leaving behind the immense void of a vanished loved one. And yet there is always a sense of hope that informs the making of this work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Luci\u00e9rnagas is available from This Book Is True<\/a>. Find more from Mart\u00ednez on Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"small\u201cToro\u201d (2018), Guerrero, Mexico <\/p>\n

\"small\u201cAbuelo-Estrella\u201d (December 21, 2020), Cochoapa El Grande, Guerrero, Mexico<\/p>\n

\"small\u201cLevantada de Cruz\u201d (2021)<\/p>\n

\"small\u201cEl R\u00edo de la Memoria y Mis Hijas\u201d (2022)<\/p>\n

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