Proven Art and Violence: Teresa Margolles at unforgettable Museion Bolzano 2020
The Artist: Teresa Margolles
The Show: Frontera, at Museion Bolzano, Italy
May 29 – August 28, 2011
Muro Baleado, Teresa Margolles
There is both power and poignancy in the discomfort-producing work of Mexican contemporary artist Teresa Margolles. Much of her work explores death and its palpable remains. Two years ago at the 2009 Venice Biennale, Margolles represented her country with the aptly titled What Else Could We Talk About?, an exhibition featuring art composed of mud, blood and broken windshield glass from sites of drug-related executions in northern Mexico.
Margolles’s ability to draw viewers into and make them a part of realities they might rather not even think about is further on display in Frontera, an exhibition on its way to the MUSEION of modern and contemporary art in Bolzano, Italy, after an initial run at the Kunstahalle Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.
Frontera features both new and previous work that reflects on the ongoing conflagration of narco violence in Mexico, particularly in the besieged border city of Ciudad Juarez. Mostly minimalist in form, the sculptures and installations of Frontera achieve a sometimes deeply somber, sometimes explosive emotionality that stems from the material used in their composition.
In the case of Muro Baleado (Culiacán), 2009, and Muro Ciudad Juárez, 2010, that material consists of actual walls bearing the marks and residues of drug executions, collected by the artist on location in Mexico and reassembled in Bolzano. Other works include Cuba, 2010, a one ton cube made from iron extracted from the reinforced concrete of demolished buildings.
The exhibition also contains displays of jewellery, watches and other personal items of people deliberately murdered or inadvertently caught up in scenes of violence in Mexico, including police officers, government officials, and tourists.
One of Mexico’s preeminent and most controversial contemporary artists, Teresa Margolles is a cofounder of the group SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medicine Service). In addition to numerous solo shows and the Venice Biennale (2009), she has taken part in Manifesta7, the Liverpool Biennale (2006), the Prague Biennale (2005 and 2003) and other international exhibitions.
featuring art composed of mud, blood and broken windshield glass from sites of drug-related executions in northern Mexico.
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