Teresa Margolles

Life

Margolles was born in Culiacán, Mexico in 1963. She originally trained as a forensic pathologist, and holds diplomas in science of communication and forensic medicine from Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City, as well as studying art at the Direccion de Fomento a la Cultura Regional del Estado de Sinaloa, Culiacan, Mexico.

For her the morgue reflects society, particularly Mexican urban experience, where drug-related crime, poverty, political upheaval, and military action have resulted in violence and death;

"The work of Teresa Margolles has always taken the human body and its liquid components as protagonists; they serve as vehicles for a relentless indictment of the growing violence in the world at large and in her own native country in particular, namely Mexico." Letizia Ragaglia, 2011

"When I was working with SEMEFO I was very interested in what was happening inside the morgue and the situations that were occurring, let's say, a few meters outside the morgue, among family members and relatives. But Mexico has changed so violently that it's no longer possible to describe what's happening outside from within the morgue. The pain, loss and emptiness are now found in the streets." Teresa Margolles 2009

In 1990, Margolles founded an artists' collective titled SEMEFO, which is an anagram for the Mexican coroner's office. Other core members of SEMEFO included Arturo Angulo and Carlos Lopez, yet the group had a loose membership. Through performance and installation-based work, SEMEFO commented on social violence and death in Mexico. Margolles left SEMEFO in the late 1990s. Since then her independent art practice continues to explore themes of death, violence and exclusion, specifically using forensic material and human remains. She uses materials retrieved from the morgue where she has her studio, such as the water used to wash corpses, which she uses as the foundation for her work;

"The water comes from Mexico City’s morgue. It’s water used to wash the bodies of murder victims." Teresea Margolles, 2006

In 2012 she was honored with a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands and the 5th Artes Mundi prize for international contemporary art. She exhibits worldwide and has two works in the Tate collection; Flag I, a version of a work shown at the Vennice Bienniale 2009 when Margolles represented Mexico, and 37 Bodies, which memorialises Mexican murder victims with short pieces of surgical thread knotted together to form a single line.

Solo exhibitions

Literature