Martin Kim
Program Coordinator
Arizona State Museum

Daniel Martin Diaz's work embraces us in a cross-cultural dialogue exploring Latino roots - challenging each of us with masterful and often poignant renderings of its historic iconography. It is an opportunity for us to experience with him, the solace of a quest - seeking out beliefs that make up the fundamental character of our identities.

Art operates on many levels for both the artist and the viewer. Neither are exempt from the challenge of decoding this increasingly complex strategy of human expression.

Painting/ drawing can be a process of inquiry. When art explores important rhetorical questions with particular candor and honesty,, it may reveal issues that can be better recognized for their value by both artist and viewer. It takes a particular courage on the part of any artist to encode a question in visual form - only to abandon it to be read (or misread) by a viewer who has no reason to offer the artist any particular sympathy.

The artist is most vulnerable when their work is cathartic - meant to purge the memory of something intimate and personal. The willingness to bare the soul in this manner is what is addressed by writer/ director Akira Kurasawa, when he said:

... "To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes."
.....

In the traditional art of indigenous peoples, art often evokes a cultural memory, serving as a mnemonic device for values that are shared. This gives the art objects a content beyond the formal aesthetics of beauty, that also rises above market-driven issues often associated with personal expression. Such culture-based works resonate with value for their cultural integrity.

Daniel Martin Diaz's work has this integrity, this strength of vulnerability, this cultural authenticity; the candor of honest inquiry.

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