53rd INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2009

Teresa Margolles
¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar?
(What Else Could We Talk About?)
7 June – 22 November 2009
MEXICAN PAVILION

The pavilion will host a solo show by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles titled ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?) which involves of a single and continuous intervention, with different actions and works along the pavillion. The show is curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina.

The works presented at the Mexican Pavilion are a subtle chronicle of the effects of a devilish international economy: the vicious circle of prohibition, addiction, accumulation, poverty, hatred and repression that transmogrifies the transgresive pleasures and puritan obsessions of the North into the South as Hell.

teresa margolles venice bienale
Teresa Margolles | Which other issue we could talk about? | 2009

vaporizacion
Vaporización/Vaporisation
Mexico, 2003

In 1990 Teresa Margolles (Mexico, 1963) was a founding member of the group SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service) and has in this capacity since held performances, made installations, objects and videos and intervened in public places. Later on, she continued working on her own using the morgue as a laboratory and study, developing social and conceptual artistic strategies on the basis of the use of bodily substances and images of corpses. Her exploration of death as a subject, has been related to a ever deepening research on issues of economic and political inequalities, social exploitation, the process of historical mourning and the way extended violence defines the cultural and philosophical landscape of today.

margolles

Due to the recent upsurge of violence in Mexico ─ according to the press, in 2008 more than 5000 people lost their lives in executions and shootings related to drug trafficking and its combat ─ Teresa Margolles’s work, that for almost two decades has concentrated in the exploration of the artistic possibilities of human remains, has put an increasing emphasis in the meditation on violent death and its victims.

margolles

Margolles most recent work involve a subtle and moving chronicle of the pervasive economy of death that plagues the north of Mexico. In the last two years, she had focused in creating installations, paintings and objects departing from the material traces of killings in the streets and the associated verbal production taken from execution notes, police reports and press accounts of violence.

margolles

¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? will be a narrative based on tactics of contamination and material actions, which will seek to emotional and intellectually involve the visitors in the issues surrounding the way violence and the current global economy involve the effective declaration of whole generations of individuals as a virtually disposable social class, trapped in between the perverse logic of criminality, capitalism and prohibition. The Pavillion project will be accompanied by a number of public actions which will extend the concept of her participation to the venues of the Venice Biennale and the city.

teresa-margolles
En el aire / In the Air
2003
Bubbles made with water of the morgue that was used to wash the corpses before the autopsy

Conversations With Contemporary Artists: Teresa at MOMA

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