Commissioned for 50 Years in Hollywood, Martinez’s paintings Intruder Alert and Border Patrol take an eye toward the resonances of the colonial mentality, past and present. In Border Patrol, the work self-reflexively considers the colonial subject’s desire to conform to “modern” society, while evoking a contemporary conversation about global consumerism. The blond-haired and blue-eyed “primitives” in Intruder Alert satirize the psychology of fear westerners have constructed in the face of migration and cultural hybridity.
