Series of paintings produced between 2019 and 2020
Los Nuevos Mártires is a series of paintings that enters into dialogue with the history of religious imagery, reimagining contemporary celebrities as the new saints of our time. Drawing parallels between the suffering bodies depicted in classical martyr paintings and the highly mediated moments of emotional collapse experienced by figures of popular culture, Mauricio Muñoz examines the rituals of fame, spectacle, and collective fascination surrounding celebrity culture. Pop singers and reality television personalities appear suspended in moments of vulnerability, captured through the intrusive gaze of the paparazzi camera and transformed into contemporary icons of devotion.
Through thick, visceral brushstrokes and a glossy surface achieved with porcelain-like enamel, the paintings inhabit a space between the sacred and the grotesque. Their exaggerated forms and distorted appearances place these figures within an uncanny visual universe, where beauty, suffering, and excess become inseparable. By appropriating the visual language of religious painting, Los Nuevos Mártires reflects on the ways contemporary culture creates its own icons, rituals, and objects of collective contemplation.