Works with

 

Daniel Joseph Martinez THE FULLY ENLIGHTENED EARTH RADIATES DISASTER TRIUMPHANT 10th Cairo International Biennale United States Pavilion

The Cairo International Biennale Commission

Daniel Joseph. Martinez’s project for the 2006 Cairo International Biennale continues the artist’s creative and iconoclastic investigation into the philosophical dimensions of art and social consciousness in contemporary American culture. The installation consists of an isolated, life-sized figure directed by a computer to flail continuously on the floor of a predetermined space. The installation – which is partly inspired by the imagery of director Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, itself based on the science-fiction classic, Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – uses the animatronic sculpture as a metaphor for epistemological and social dysfunction. By alluding to the transfer of cognitive structures from humans to machines in the late twentieth century, as articulated by the Mexican philosopher Manuel de Landa, Martinez seeks to broach an analysis of intelligence and self-determination in the age of information technology.



About the Artist

Daniel Joseph Martinez has created image- and text-based work dealing with power relationships in contemporary society for over 30 years. A Los Angeles native, Martinez is best known for his1993 Biennial Exhibition entry at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. For the project, Martinez altered the normal museum admission tags from saying “WMAA” to “I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white.” Recent exhibitions include the MFAH exhibition Indelible Images (trafficking between Life and Death), and the inaugural solo exhibition Flesh Eating Prosthetic (opium des volks) How I Fell in Love with My Dirty Bomb (phagocitage des prothesis), at LAXART in Los Angeles. Martinez is Professor of Theory, Practice, and Meditation of Contemporary Art at the University of California, Irvine, where he teaches in the Graduate Studies Program and New Genres Department.

Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The mission of the Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) is to collect, exhibit, research, and educate audiences on the diverse artistic production of Latin Americans and Latinos, which includes artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as from the United States.

About the Cairo International Biennale

Established in 1989, the Cairo International Biennale is the largest international visual-arts exhibition in the Arab world. The Biennale attracts major international participation along with the leading artists of the Arab and Muslim world.

The 2006 members of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE) that recommended this proposal for support were Jane Farver, Director of the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Paul Ha, Director of the Contemporary Art Museum, Saint Louis; Marti Mayo, Director of the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Francesco Bonami, Manilow Senior Curator at Large, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Catherine Rose, Dallas, Texas; and artist Fred Wilson.

The official U.S. participation at the 2006 Cairo International Biennale is supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.

Exhibition Catalog

The Fully Enlightened Earth Radiates Disaster Triumphant is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue in English and Arabic documenting Martinez’s projects over the last five years, with an essay by Gilbert Vicario, an artist interview by Moukhtar Kocache, Ford Foundation program officer for the Middle East and North Africa. The publication was designed by Tracey Shiffman of Shiffman Design and will be distributed by D.A.P. Inc.