Christopher Sonny Martinez
Christopher Sonny Martinez is a filmmaker and photographer born and raised in Oak Cliff, Texas. Martinez has lived and produced work in Chicago, New York, and Dallas. Martinez’s work breeds intimate moments from a Queer Chicano lens. Christopher Sonny Martinez was Art's Mission Oak Cliff's first 2021 Artist-in-Residence, ACRE’s 2018 Artist-in-Residence, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
RR: Hello Sonny, glad to have you as our first interview this year. How did your 2021 fair out last year?
CSM: Hey Raul, It’s been a wild year, this is my second year living in Texas after being away for ten years. Texas is and always has been my home, but being back full time comes with its challenges. Last year I was the first artist in residency at Arts Mission Oak Cliff, which was an intense experience because I developed two solo shows in a span of three months, but I loved being in a sanctuary working religiously on my practice. Honestly, I was just grateful to have space designated to share and collaborate with other artists safely during the pandemic. I wrapped production for a short film I directed where we shot all over Texas like Fort Worth, Galveston, Grand Prairie and of course Dallas. I collaborated on another film in the summer at ACRE artist’s residency in Wisconsin with my dear friend Keioui Keijaun Thomas, I was part of a traveling group show with Co- Prosperity in Chicago and the Catskills New York, I showed work at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center in three separate shows, and I was just curated into a group show at 500x gallery. It’s up until January 16th, so you should check it out!
RR: That sounds like a busy year. I'm glad it went that way. I know you work in both video and photography but I’d like to start with your interest in the still image. What is your process like when you make photographs?
CSM: Yes, I consider myself an image maker so I work in photography and film/video. Currently, the still image work I’ve been making has been with large format photography. It’s a process that I consider authentic to photography’s vast history and also creates a closeness to my subject that I can only symbolize as making love. I primarily work with subjects that I personally have a relationship with, my Mexican American family or my chosen queer family. Recently, I’ve been feeling inspired by the trace that analog photography leaves behind, light leaks, scratches on the film, multiple exposure. At first, I was apprehensive at presenting my work with these ‘accidents’ but as I’ve developed my analog practice I feel that these traces have a spiritual quality to the work. They act as spirits, ghosts, fragments that give depth to the subject. Oh, and I sometimes capture spirits with my analog large format camera, no big deal.
RR: The portrait work you make is very intimate in their portrayal of a person. How do you think intimacy plays a role in your work?
CSM: Intimacy is very important with how I work with my subjects. The connection we share is based in trust and consent. The process by which I work is ritualistic in the way it’s set up. It takes time to set up the camera and get the subject to become still and relaxed. Our closeness is symbolized in our relationship for the creation of an image. It requires a lot of patience, breath, and vulnerability. Vulnerability is almost like giving a part of yourself to someone else and in essence, photography is capturing that vulnerability. That’s why I love shooting nudes, you are stripping part of your personality, your ego, and what’s left is at your core, your body, your presence. Working with my subjects, the way large format shooting is set up, feels like having sex. When you’re having sex, when you’re letting go of your inhibitions and trusting the person you’re with, vulnerability plays a big role in how me and my subjects move. The ‘orgasm’ moment can sometimes, for me, be the actual shutter release from the camera or the moment after. And then you come, an image is produced, the moment is over, and the experience feels spiritual.
RR: That is an interesting concept. The intersection of sex and photography and their intra-relationship to one another. I also enjoy the space that you place your subjects (and sometimes yourself) within a portrait, making them feel vulnerable to their surroundings in a certain way. What does placement mean to you?
CSM: A lot of the time, the location becomes a placement of time. My subjects are generally black and brown family members, and they have a familiar presence. It’s easy for me to situate my subjects in the domestic environment, because they feel comfortable in their natural setting. I like to push this with some of my work, the level of comfortability the viewer feels for the subject. With some of my nudes, the emphasis becomes more on the presence of a body forming into a landscape.
The preservation of our image, of our bodies, throughout history, has often been confiscated. We are not allowed to be in charge of our images as brown people, history wouldn’t allow this. With my practice, I want my subjects to take charge of their presence, of their body, of their spirit. Thinking about that history and the dominated white-cis presence of the photographer in landscape, I am hoping to preserve my queer black and brown family though the way portraiture moves into landscape. Flesh becomes Earth.
RR: I think we have similar ideas when we talk about the placement WE find ourselves in and the assumptions and predispositions that may come with it. Could you talk about what being Tejanx means to you?
CSM: Being raised in Texas and growing up queer, I always felt like my identity wasn’t allowed. It was hard trying to figure out who I was when I didn’t see my presence represented in my elders. I honestly didn’t feel recognized until I left Texas, and I moved to Chicago. Chicago was my birthplace as an artist and as a baby queer. The experiences I had there taught me more about my identity than I think growing up in Texas ever could. I feel a need to deconstruct the notion of machismo with my work. Tejanx is the gender neutral term referring to the landscape we are taking back. Spanish is already a language rooted in colonization. I’m using Tejanx to reclaim a history of LGBTQ+ that have been marginalized and neglected by our society, by colonization. We need to dismantle these moments of the masculine or the feminine, and I am using Tejanx as a way to access this. I am using this term as a way to be more inclusive, but also to build community in solidarity with the oppressed groups I always felt apart of.
RR: Having been in an exhibition with you and seeing your work, I find a particular piece of yours very beautiful. One that you have actually printed onto a bed cover and displayed variously. It reminds me a lot of the Latinx style colchas that are common in Latino households. It makes your photograph very sculptural.
CSM: I really appreciate that. A lot of my work is sculptural. Like the way I tend to work with my subjects, symbolizing the body as flesh. Much of my photography I have turned into sculptural work. Last year, I made two covejas - blankets that had a Mexican familiarity in texture. These covejas have seen multiple forms of display, on a bed, on a gallery wall, hanging from the rafters of a repurposed church, and I’m captivated by their presence each time. I feel like I’m back in my Welita’s little green room in West Dallas. I also made a series of etchings printed on mirror glass. These etchings are very much sculptures, transforming large format photographic negatives into reflective pieces that capture the viewer in a space of liminality, in between positive and negative.
RR: Now that you are back in the Texas landscape, what are some more things you hope to do as you continue making work?
CSM: Honestly, I’m just trying to create more Texas cultural stories. I feel like being thrusted back into a Tejas mentality, after living in cities oversaturated with the same regurgitation of stories, it’s really pushing me to make the important work of my Tejanx history. I’m using my family and my history to create the work I want to see present.
RR: Is there anything you have coming in the near future as we enter this New Year?
CSM: As of now, I'm wrapping up this group show at 500x and planning on focusing most of my year on filmmaking. I’m trying to rediscover my voice as a screenwriter, so I’m constantly thinking about and watching cinema. I’m spending more time in the movie theater, and I’m collaborating on scripts with artists that I trust. I’m having two films premiering in the coming months, and I’m planning on making new sculptural work for a show this summer. I’m also gonna be doing an apprenticeship program that I’m really excited about, but don’t want to share too much before it’s official. It’s still a wild time in the world. Covid is again running rampant, and honestly, I never had anxiety before 2020. I feel a little apprehensive about stepping into the new year, but I’m also not a little bitch. So, I’m gonna continue pushing the work I wanna see pushed, supporting the artists, the trans artists, the gender non-conforming artists, the queer artists, the gay artists, the lesbian artists, the hiv+ artists, the black artists, the brown artists, the indigenous artists, the disabled artists, the marginalized artists, the artists that deserve it! And I’m ready to fuck shit up in Texas.
RR: We love to see it! Thank you Sonny!
CSM: Thanks Raul. Excited to see what you and Deep Red Press bring into the new year. I’m proud of the work you’re doing for the community and feel honored to be a part of your legacy!