Daniel Joseph Martinez

Divine Violence
2007

Room with walls covered in framed yellow panels, each featuring centered black text.

Divine Violence functions, in Daniel Joseph Martinez’s words, as “a typology of every organization in the world that uses violence or aggression to fulfill its political ideology.” The installation is comprised of 125 panels, each of which bears the name of a political organization in black lettering on a wooden ground painted with automotive gold flake. These organizations represent diverse—and sometimes vehemently contradictory—aims and politics. Martinez’s database includes right-wing Israeli as well as Islamist groups, and insurgent constituencies from Suriname, Uganda, Armenia, and elsewhere, and the artist deliberately foregrounds the heterogeneity of the groups he represents. Long interested in revealing relationships of power, Martinez here uses the slick, luxurious gold paint to posit a link between global capitalism and the brutality and carnage in which these political subjects engage, under the name of wealth, religion, or both. Taken together, the collection of panels raises the question of when is violence acceptable—to whom, and why. Indeed, the work’s title refers to philosopher Walter Benjamin’s coinage for a form of violence that involves pure means for knowable ends.

Not on view

Date
2007

Classification
Installations

Medium
Enamel and oil on panels

Dimensions
Overall: 153 × 275 × 187in. (388.6 × 698.5 × 475 cm)

Accession number
2008.289a-d

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee, with additional funds from Neil Bluhm, Melva Bucksbaum, Philip Geier, Jr., Nicki Harris, Allison Kanders and Pamela Sanders

Rights and reproductions
© artist or artist’s estate

API
artworks/33379

Audio

Daniel Joseph Martinez, Divine Violence, 2007

In An Incomplete History of Protest (Spanish)

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Daniel Joseph Martinez, Divine Violence, 2007

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Narrator: Daniel Joseph Martinez.
Daniel Joseph Martinez: Son observaciones o monumentos de los sucesos más destacados ocurridos en la última gran visita.
Este es un mundo de cadáveres desparramados por las calles y los campos; sin embargo, en el carro de la muerte, el músico borracho se despierta y grita: “pero yo no estoy muerto, ¿o sí?”.
He entrado en un alivio de la digresión, de alguien que se escapa, de alguien que esquiva esta claustrofobia impuesta y conquista el miedo a través de la pura desesperación, o la malicia, o la cobardía, o una suerte de heroísmo épico.
Discúlpeme, pero en los últimos veinte años hemos visto a Estados Unidos transformarse hasta quedar completamente irreconocible. En cualquier caso, ningún movimiento guerrillero puede derrocar a un gobierno; lo que sí puede hacer es crear una especie de caos que favorezca el cambio radical.
Lo único que puedo decir es que, en la historia, las armas más poderosas han sido siempre las formas de conciencia nuevas y que toda revolución fundamental ha resultado de una evolución.
Parecemos estar esperando algún tipo de catástrofe en la que proyectarnos. Pero cuidado, que la locura es una realidad, no una perversión. Yo soy solo una obsesión, no me hablen, o no me conozcan. ¿Creen que existo?
Quizás vean en su pequeña boca la sangre marchita del coral; en su sombra de ojos, árboles de palma embriagados de sol. Otro hombre saca la pierna por la ventana, con aspecto desorientado, como un lunático, con las palmas de las manos alzadas golpeando el aire, con espuma en la boca. ¡Cabrones! ¡Me han robado!
Así que, ahora que todas las atenuaciones han disminuido y no queda nada por esconder, qué rápido se ha hecho evidente que la infección se ha propagado sin remedio.
Alguien, en algún lugar, ha atado la oscuridad, sabemos por qué estamos aquí. Es debido a nuestra afinidad por la desobediencia.
Daniel Joseph Martinez, Divine Violence, 2007

In An Incomplete History of Protest

0:00

Daniel Joseph Martinez, Divine Violence, 2007

0:00

Narrator: Daniel Joseph Martinez.
Daniel Joseph Martinez: Being observations or memorials, of the most remarkable occurrences, which happened in the last great visitation.
This is a world of corpses strewn in the streets and fields, yet in the death cart itself, the drunken piper wakes up to cry, but I am not dead, am I?
I have slipped into a relief of digression, of someone escaping, someone sidestepping this enforced claustrophobia, conquering the fear through sheer desperation, or malice, or cowardice, or a sort of epic heroism.
Excuse me, in the last twenty years we have seen America transformed until it is completely unrecognizable. In any case, no guerrilla movement can overthrow a government; what they can do is create a sort of chaos that is favorably disposed to radical change.
All I can say, is that in history, the most powerful arms have always been new forms of consciousness, and that fundamental revolution has come as the result of an evolution.
We seem to be waiting for some catastrophe to project ourselves into. Watch out, madness is a reality, not a perversion. I am only an obsession, don’t talk to me, otherwise don’t know me. Do you think I exist?
Perhaps you will see in your little mouth, the withered blood of coral, in your eyeshadow, palm trees drunken by the sun. Another man sticks his leg through the window, bewildered face, like a lunatic, palms vertically flat, beat in the air, froth comes from his mouth. Bastards! They’ve stolen me!
So that now, all our extenuations have abated, and it was no more to be concealed, how quickly it appeared that the infection has spread beyond all hopes.
Someone, somewhere has tied up the darkness, we know why we are all here. It is our affinity for disobedience.