Ritual Cut, 2025
used ready-made machete, clay, epoxy, wood, paint, polyurethane, oil markers, green aventurine, real coconuts, 45 x 29 x 12 inches
$5,000
This sculpture began with a coconut ritual performed on the rooftop of my studio in New York last month. The act centers on the machete—an object loaded with historical weight and personal resonance. The repeated gesture of cracking coconuts open becomes both a physically demanding labor and a form of muscle memory, echoing the daily survival tasks undertaken to nourish and sustain families across generations and geographies. Following the ritual, I collected the remnants—the machete, the other tools used, the broken husks, the juice—and brought them into the studio. The machete was the first to be encased in non-fired clay, an attempt to trap and hold the energy of the gesture, preserving the labor embedded in the act. Pieces of shattered coconut were dried, sealed, and preserved in layers of epoxy resin, becoming fossil-like fragments of the performance. The coconut water was pasteurized and combined with a synthetic sweat I developed, forming new liquid hybrids that bridge bodily exertion and ritual offering. Encapsulated in glass vials, this fluid holds both trace and transformation—a distilled record of action, spirit, and survival.
IG: @jamiemartinezstudio
Mother-In-Law's Gallery 