REBECA MARTELL – NIGHT IS THE NEW DAY

Where will we go after the last borders? 

Where will the birds fly after the last darling? 

Where will the plants sleep after the last wind? 

We’ll write our names with steam dyed crimson,  we will cut the hand to the edge so that our meat completes it.

Here we will die.

Here, in the last passage.

Here or there… our blood will plant its olive trees.

Mahmoud Darwish

In the black and white photographic series Night is the New Day, Rebeca Martell evokes the recognition of the strangeness that she experiences looking at in exile.  Between surprise and nostalgia, Martell moves towards the redefinition of herself, cautiously exploring the places she sees and the people who inhabit them.  With a foreign lens, looks for the moment that sublimates the experience of herself, that captivates the feeling of being in the dark leaving behind the memories of the tropic, like running away from a bad dream.

Martell’s camera is the vehicle that intervenes between her gaze and the other; where the faces are not recognized, where the blur in the images is the metaphor of the distance between the self and the beings that inhabit reality.  Martell utilizes the absence of light to blur the very act of looking. Martell’s work not only sublimates emotions but is also a lonely walk; the cold and silence, the memories that inhabit the memory. 

The images of Night is the New Day are an evocation of what the darkness hides from the eye, what cannot be perceived by the naked eye, the ghost of the absent light during the winter that only leaves in its wake a few shades. Rebeca Martell makes use of photography to portray her days of winter in Sweden while, at the same time offers us a testimonial of a look that becomes raw, powerless and unprotected against others and before her own process of self-recognition.  She portrays the moment where the connection between the gaze and the soul is created, right there where it appears what cannot be shown with the naked eye, where she reaches the image from the furthest part of the unconscious.                            

Liliana Marcos Lozano, 2022

Rebeca Martell bio:
Rebeca Martell, an independent photographer, trained at UNAM, Centro de la Imagen, Jumex Collection, Philadelphia Photo Arts, Rufino Tamayo Museum, Alameda Art Laboratory, and Photoespaña.

Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, the Barnes Foundation, X-Teresa Arte Actual, the Sebastián Foundation, Brukenthal National Museum of Contemporary Art in Romania, Philadelphia Photo Arts, and the National Auditorium; as well as in the Mexican embassy in Spain, Belgium, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece, Holland, France, San Pedro Museum of Art, and in the Juan C. Méndez PhotoMuseum, as well as having been a winner at the eighth State Meeting of Contemporary Art in Puebla, Mexico.

Philiput presents: Rebeca Martell – Night is the New Day photographic art by Rebeca Martell, curated by Devin Cohen, curatorial text by Liliana Marcos Lozano

event photos by Devin Cohen