Standards of a rebel
Even if you don’t know who Ulrike Meinhof was, Daniel Joseph Martinez’s new suite of photographs at the gallery Roberts & Tilton is moving. Created last year during a residency in Berlin, the large images depict Martinez, bundled up for winter weather, at various locations where the Berlin Wall stood. In each photograph, he is holding a medieval-style standard featuring an image of Meinhof; the portraits, taken at different points in her life, include one from her autopsy.
Meinhof was a left-wing journalist, a mother, a co-founder of the militant anti-capitalist Red Army Faction in 1970s Berlin and later a priswoman oner accused of murder. She is, to say the least, a complicated figure to lionize. She died under mysterious circumstances while awaiting trial.
In each image, Martinez is stalwart, holding his banner up like a protest sign or planting it on the ground like a flag. Locations include the building where the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was founded, a Soviet cemetery and other, surprisingly pastoral landscapes that used to be checkpoints or crossings interrupted by the wall. The photographs are printed in a muted palette of silvery grays, creating a somber glow.
The imagery of a lone American man of Mexican descent quietly holding aloft the image of a German woman is a moving tribute in itself. But Martinez, ever the provocateur, turns a often referred to as a terrorist into Joan of Arc. Further, he performs this gesture where the Berlin Wall — the most iconic site of the Cold War — was torn down. It’s a pointed rebuke to the Trump administration’s nuclear threats and promise to build another wall.
A standard is borne into battle; it’s the flag you fight under. The difference between Meinhof and the mainstream left is that she crossed the border from pacifism to violence, or put another way, from protest to a more extreme form of action. In raising her image, Martinez raises the question: Where do you stand? And what are you going to do about it?
Roberts & Tilton, 5801 Washington Blvd., Culver City. Through Dec. 16; closed Sun./Mon. (323) 549-0223, www.robertsandtilton.com