Jul. 9—For Jacob Johns, painting a portrait of the man accused of trying to kill him was a sort of exercise in healing.
The Spokane, Wash.-based artist and activist on Tuesday afternoon stood next to his own five-foot-tall painting of Ryan Martinez, who is accused of having shot Johns last September at a protest in Española.
The plan, Johns said, is to turn the painting into a work of collaborative art by leaving markers next to the portrait and encouraging visitors to the exhibition to contribute to it.
“What happened to me was awful, traumatic — the worst thing I’ve ever experienced,” Johns said. “The people who witnessed what happened were really distraught — the idea is to find healing not just for myself, but also for the community.”
The art exhibit, called Forward Movement, is both an attempt to find closure and to forge a new path forward, he said.
Johns is showing more than 100 paintings in the show — his first exhibition in Santa Fe — which will be open Thursday through Sunday at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe.
In recent days, Johns returned to Northern New Mexico for the first time since he left a hospital in Albuquerque last year.
He lifted his shirt to show several scars that remained from the shooting and from subsequent operations — a bulge now juts from his abdomen.
“The idea is to try to find closure,” he said. “I try to move on, but it’s impossible — it’s a constant reminder every time I look down at myself.”
Johns was visiting Albuquerque to attend a convention with the National Congress of American Indians in late September 2023, he said, when he was invited to travel to Española, where several Native American activist groups were protesting the planned installation of a statue of conquistador Juan de Oñate.
Martinez, a counterprotester, was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat when he began heckling protestors as they spoke to the crowd. Videos appear to show Martinez attempting to charge through a group of protestors, leading to a scuffle, before pulling a handgun out of his waistband and firing a single shot.
Martinez faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless driving, and prosecutors are seeking firearms and hate crime sentencing enhancements. His lawyer has argued he acted in self-defense. His trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection in September.
After the shooting, Johns spent two months at University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. The hollow-point bullet ripped through his insides, he said, tearing through organs. Doctors had to sew his stomach back together and remove his spleen.
More than nine months later, he said every time he takes a deep breath, it still feels as though his ribs are cracking.
In the weeks after he was discharged from the hospital — with three tubes and four abscesses still in his chest — Johns traveled to Dubai to attend the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference with a goal of advancing a climate change policy platform based on “Indigenous wisdom with a global perspective,” he said.
“One of the obligations I had committed myself to was a new list of tasks, and this was one of them: continuing to do the work,” Johns said.
Many of Johns’s paintings are inspired by people and scenes from his tenure as an activist for Indigenous and environmental causes. One portrays a Palestinian environmental activist named Aya who Johns said he has worked alongside around the world. She is holding a sign that says, “NO CLIMATE JUSTICE UNDER OCCUPATION.” Another shows a Native American activist with a red handprint on her face — a symbol used to draw attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Another painting of Johns’ is a depiction of former president Donald Trump’s mugshot with stylized paint drips around the portrait.
At least three of his pieces are directly related to last year’s shooting in Española. One shows Johns lying on the concrete after being shot with five others crouched around him, each with a hand on his torso.
Luis Peña and Mateo Peixinho, two activists from the Española Valley who were both present outside the Rio Arriba County Complex during the shooting last year, helped Johns organize the coming exhibition as well as a dinner Sunday that will feature Native American cuisine and song and dance, aiming to “honor ancestral traditions while showcasing their powerful resurgence in a contemporary setting,” according to a news release from their group Tewa Basin Collectivo.
Peña and Peixinho were helping Johns to prepare the art show at El Museo on Tuesday.
Peixinho said they gave Johns “the full Norteño welcome” back to the region to celebrate his life and his message, saying, “We’re not deterred — no kid’s going to come from somewhere else and stop us.”
Maria Martinez, the executive director of El Museo, said she believes the art exhibition will advance dialogue around identity and storytelling in the way her organization aims to do. She said Johns’ paintings of Ryan Martinez captured a “tenderness” in the way he approached his subject.
“This matters — to bring it up again, perhaps under a different ambience,” Maria Martinez said.
