About the Artist

Daniel Joseph Martinez has created image- and text-based work dealing with power relationships in contemporary society for over 30 years. A Los Angeles native, Martinez is best known for his1993 Biennial Exhibition entry at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. For the project, Martinez altered the normal museum admission tags from saying “WMAA” to “I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white.” Recent exhibitions include the MFAH exhibition Indelible Images (trafficking between Life and Death), and the inaugural solo exhibition Flesh Eating Prosthetic (opium des volks) How I Fell in Love with My Dirty Bomb (phagocitage des prothesis), at LAXART in Los Angeles. Martinez is Professor of Theory, Practice, and Meditation of Contemporary Art at the University of California, Irvine, where he teaches in the Graduate Studies Program and New Genres Department.

Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The mission of the Latin American Art Department and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) is to collect, exhibit, research, and educate audiences on the diverse artistic production of Latin Americans and Latinos, which includes artists from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as from the United States.

About the Cairo International Biennale

Established in 1989, the Cairo International Biennale is the largest international visual-arts exhibition in the Arab world. The Biennale attracts major international participation along with the leading artists of the Arab and Muslim world.

The 2006 members of the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE) that recommended this proposal for support were Jane Farver, Director of the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Paul Ha, Director of the Contemporary Art Museum, Saint Louis; Marti Mayo, Director of the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Francesco Bonami, Manilow Senior Curator at Large, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Catherine Rose, Dallas, Texas; and artist Fred Wilson.

The official U.S. participation at the 2006 Cairo International Biennale is supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.

Exhibition Catalog

The Fully Enlightened Earth Radiates Disaster Triumphant is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue in English and Arabic documenting Martinez’s projects over the last five years, with an essay by Gilbert Vicario, an artist interview by Moukhtar Kocache, Ford Foundation program officer for the Middle East and North Africa. The publication was designed by Tracey Shiffman of Shiffman Design and will be distributed by D.A.P. Inc.