A VISIT WITH TERESA MARGOLLES TO CROYDON TWO DAYS AFTER THE RIOTS

Teresa Margolles at work, afterwards she collected debris from the sites of riots, fires and lootings.








Teresa Margolles was born in Culiacan, Mexico in 1963 (Culiacan is the capital of Sinaloa, home of the violent Sinaloa Cartel, the biggest exporters of cocaine to the USA). After she studied art and communication sciences at the National Univerity , she additionally got a diploma in forensic medicine. She lives and works between Mexico City and Madrid. Her most recent solo exhibitions include: Frontera at Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel and Museion, Bolzano (2011); What Else Could We Talk About? at the Mexican pavilion during the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); En Lugar de los Hechos – Anstelle der Tatsachen, Kunsthalle Krems (2008), 127 cuerpos, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Dusseldorf (2006), Caída Libre/Chute libre, Frac de Lorraine, Metz (2005), Muerte sin fin, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main (2004) as well as The Shroud, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2003). She is currently in residence at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios in Glasgow, where she wil have an exhibition in 2012 with the support of the Henry Moore Foundation.

Teresa Margolles' work deals with the fragile border existing between life and death. Margolles originally made the morgue her studio, more recently she has worked directly on the sites of violence. Both are places of death which bear witness to social unrest and the effects of violence on the human body. Margolles works not only deals with the remains of death bodies but also with the traces of past life, its burials and its memory. More recently she has been dealing with the effects of drug violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Her work exists as a poignant memorial to those that have suffered the effects of violence.