TERESA MARGOLI
PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCES
Pascal Beausse
D
Margolles'
art.isThe
core of
Teresa
EATH
IS HER
PROFESSION.
Death
the
Mexico City morgue is her workplace: she is
both the morgue's artist and its legal and
medical technician. The neo-minimal forms
of her sculptures, installations, images and
actions are double-barreled. Their apparent
neutrality summons the viewer to a political
and metaphysical meditation on death and
on the social and economic inequalities
surrounding it. All of Margolles' works are
realized with materials either originating
from corpses or having been in contact with
them. Margolles confronts the taboo of
death, and especially the taboo that impels
us to remove corpses from view. The bodies
she handles are those of people who died a
violent death, due to a social context of
poverty and violence connected, in
particular, to drug trafficking. They are the
corpses of those Walter Benjamin called
"the eternally vanquished, the humiliated,
the victims of hunger and poverty."
Santiago Sierra, who, after his arrival in
Mexico City, found in Margolles his alter
ego, perfectly defined the elements of her
work: "Margolles' work puts the assassins
on constant trial by placing the corpses of
those victims on society's table. It opposes
the general indifference towards crimes
always committed in another society, on the
other side of the Atlantic or on global television, and is a constant reminder of the fact
that this Mexican who got killed could be
any one of us." If both anthropology (the
rituals surrounding death) and sociology
(the inequalities at the local and global
levels) inform Margolles' work, it is through
a complete reversal of traditional values.
The sacred is articulated outside of the
religious. Among Margolles' icons of
choice, Georges Bataille seems like one of
the best points of entry into what animates
the artist's peculiar exploration. Bataille
writes: "In a sense, the corpse is the most
complete affirmation of the spirit. What
death's definitive impotence and absence
reveals is the very essence of the spirit, just
as the scream of the one that is killed is the
supreme affirmation of life."
Margolles' aesthetic strategies have
considerably evolved since the 1990s and the
end of her participation in the art collective
SEMEFO (SEMEFO is an acronym for the
Forensic Medical Service). The embalmed
animal corpses and the imprints of human
cadavers have been replaced by more
restrained forms, referencing the visual codes
of minimalism without being any less
From top: Air, 2003. Installation view at Galerie
Peter Kilchmann, ZUrich. Photo: A. Burger;
Secretions on the Wall, 2002. Installation view,
Kunst-Werke, Berlin, 2002. Courtesy of Enrique
Guerrero, Mexico City and Peter Kilchmann,
Ziirich; Communal Grave, 2005. Installation view
at CAC Br6tigny, France. Courtesy of CAC
Br6tigny and Peter Kilchmann, Ziirich. Photo:
Marc Domage. Opposite: Vaporization (detail),
2002. Tryptic, C-print, 90 x 90 cm each. Courtesy
of Enrique Guerrero, Mexico City.
JULY SEPTEMBER 2005 Flash Art 107
From top: In the Air, 2003. Installation view, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City; Crematory, 2003.
Video projection, 8 mins. Opposite: Table and two benches, 2003. Installation view, Bienal de Mercosur,
Porto Alegre. Images on these two pages: Courtesy of Galeria Enrique Guerrero, Mexico City.
108 Flash Art JULY SEPTEMBER 2005
evocative. Water in all its states, as well as
human fat, have become privileged materials.
The water that has been in contact with corpses
is distilled, vaporized, turned into mist,
solidified or mixed with cement, and takes as
many forms as possible in an attempt to reintroduce death in the cycle of life. Fat was
applied on the walls of Kunst-Werke in Berlin
(Secrecionessobre el muro / Secretions on the
Wall, 2002) and on the body of a drug dealer in
Barcelona (Grumos sobre la piel / Lumps of
Fat on the Skin, 2001); it has been used to fill
the holes in the wall of a school in Cuba
(Ciudad en espera/ Standby City, 2000), and
leaked drop by drop from the ceiling to the
floor of the FRAC Lorraine in Metz (Caida
Libre / Free Fall, 2005), thus tracing an artistic
paternity link with the shaman Joseph Beuys.
Form and the formless define the two main
aesthetic poles of Margolles recent work.
Vaporizaci6n (Vaporization, 2002) invites the
viewer to penetrate an exhibition space filled
with fog, and in so doing to come into contact
with the memories of the dead - the water
being diffused in the gallery had previously
been used to wash the corpses. The realization
of this is shocking and disquieting. The atmospheric dimension of the fog doesn't permit any
distance: insinuating itself everywhere, its
droplets settling onto the skin and the clothes
of the viewer, the vaporized water establishes a
direct contact with the bodies of the dead and
short-circuits our intellectual understanding of
the work by soliciting both a sensitive and a
cognitive approach. This invitation to immerse
oneself in the space ofthese anonymous deaths
has both an evocative and an immediately
physical, sensorial dimension. Each viewer is
confronted with his/her own responsibility in
managing his/her emotions. Through the reinvention of a funerary ritual, Margolles operates
a translation from sacred to profane. What was
just a sanitary act within the morgue is
extended into a ritual. The vapor circulating in
the art space turns it into a redemptive surface.
Aire (Air, 2003) used the same principle
but made it even more mental and less tactile.
This time, water was diffused by air humidifiers located in the apparently empty exhibition space of Galerie Peter Kilchmann in
Zurich. As one crosses the room, whose
thresholds are materialized by translucent
plastic curtains, one is put in the position of
breathing the air of the dead. This invasive
aspect is completely neutralized in its potentially aggressive dimension (in terms of the
visitor's body) through the theoretically sterilized convention of the white cube, but it
remains powerfully suggestive. Where else
can we, hypermodem individuals desensitized
by the fantastic universe of technology, be put
in a situation of co-presence with death
without the company of religiosity?
En el aire (In the Air, 2003), in turn,
consisting of two bubble machines installed up
high, has a spectacular, almost ludic
dimension. The bubbles, made again from the
water used in the morgue to wash corpses
before the autopsy, fall at regular intervals on
the floor or on the heads of the visitors, evoking
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TITLE: Teresa Margolles: Primordial Substances
SOURCE: Flash Art 38 Jl/S 2005
WN: 0518203226055
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