Noé Martínez: The Shadow of the Mountain Has Tattoos

The exhibition explores a colonial past marked by slavery and human trafficking, focusing on the Gulf of Mexico region—a land once inhabited by the artist’s ancestors. Drawing from historical documentation and a dreamlike universe, Noé Martínez creates a series in which his personal imagination intertwines with a denunciation of silenced histories.

For Martínez, the body functions as a living archive, capable of uncovering information about cultures whose stories remain unrecorded and the territories once inhabited by diverse peoples. The works in this exhibition act as metaphors for that body, preserving the memory of three centuries of slavery in Huastec culture and presenting art as an act of healing colonial wounds.

The exhibition’s title refers to the shadow as a central concept in the contemporary thought of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples and in Martínez’s artistic practice. In his vision, the absence of light becomes a space for connecting with the world of the dead—a vehicle for healing and reimagining life.