Daniel Joseph Martinez

Martinez implements a “flattening out of political ideologies” in the project, whereby a globe-spanning range of resistance movements and state-run agencies appear side by side. Included are groups as seemingly disparate as the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors and the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet, every organization on his ongoing list “claims the same thing: to be right, to be moral, to be ethical, and . . . to be fighting in the name of God.” The artist derived the installation’s title from Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay “Critique of Violence,” a text in which the philosopher considers circumstances under which violence is acceptable. While Martinez boldly advocates for “the end of useful politics, as we know it,” he remains optimistic. Divine Violence prompts viewers to consider embracing what he envisions as “an intertextual and intercultural society,” one that might move humanity forward toward an “unimagined future.”