Daniel Joseph Martinez

Daniel Joseph Martinez was born in Los Angeles in 1957 and received his B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. His work utilizes conceptual operations that take the form of photography, painting, installation, robotics, performance, and public interventions, delving into issues of race and sociopolitical boundaries within American society.

Martinez gained critical attention with his intervention at the 1993 Whitney Biennial, Museum Tags: Second Movement (Overture); or Overture con Claque (Overture with Hired Audience Members), which thrust him into the national spotlight. His work has since been exhibited internationally at major museums and galleries, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1993 and 2008); the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California (1994); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1995); the International Center of Photography, New York (2004); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2005); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2006); The Project, New York (2007); the Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio, Texas (2008); Instituto Cervantes, Madrid, Spain (2010); the Anchorage Museum AIR, Anchorage, Alaska (2011); the Simon Preston Gallery, New York (2012); Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California (2012); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2013). He also represented the United States at the 10th International Cairo Biennale in Egypt (2006) and the 12th Istanbul Biennial in Turkey (2011).

His work is held in public collections across the United States and abroad, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, Florida; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Pace Foundation, San Antonio, Texas.

Martinez has received three National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Fellowships, a fellowship from the Getty Center, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. He was also awarded the United States Artists Fellowship (2008), the Rasmuson Foundation Alaska artist-in-residence award (2009), and the Fellows of Contemporary Art Fellowship (2010). His monograph, A Life of Disobedience, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2009.

Martinez is professor of art and graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine.

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