TERESA MARGOLLES (1963, Mexico) work is dedicated to investigating the causes and social consequences of death, especially those related to the violence that ravages Mexico. Rejecting the common association of death with joy in Mexican visual culture, the artist has gathered a series of documents and images that publicly address drug trafficking. Having worked in the Forensic Medical Service between 1993 and 1998, she has drawn on the work of coroner as support for her research, invested over the years in performances, videos, installations and sculptural objects. Prominent among her most recent exhibitions are the solo shows A New Work, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2018), Ya basta hijos de puta, PAC Contemporary Art Pavilion, Milan (2018), and the collective exhibitions 16th Dallas Biennial, The box company, Dallas (2017), and Manifesta 11: What People Do For Money, Zurich (2016).
In TELA BORDADA (2019), a group of women embroider a piece of fabric. Each one of them tells her story while working. The fabric, in turn, has a story of its own. Obtained from a morgue in São Paulo, it is one of the remains of the kind of death and daily violence that interest the artist in her work. The embroidery adds a new layer to the fabric, integrated with the existing marks. A video document of the process and the narratives, as well as the cloth worked on by the embroiderers, remain on display after the performance ends.
- More about Teresa Margolles in Collection