ART CITIES:N.York-Teresa Margolles

Teresa Margolles examines the social causes and consequences of death, destruction and civil war. For Margolles, the morgue accurately reflects society, particularly her home area where deaths caused by drug-related crime, poverty, political crisis and government’s brutal military response have devastated communities. She has developed a unique, restrained language in order to speak for her silenced subjects, the victims discounted as ‘collateral damage’ and nameless statistics.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: James Cohan Gallery Archive

Teresa Margolles for  her solo exhibition “El asesinato cambia el mundo” (Assassination changes the world), has created a new body of sculpture, photography, and installation that contends with the underlying causes of death and ongoing trauma on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. Assembled in collaboration with communities affected by violence, the objects on view examine shared experience to underscore mutual accountability within a context of commemoration and collective mourning. Central to the exhibition is “El manto negro”, a large-scale installation comprised of burnished ceramic pieces hand-made by artisans in Mata Ortiz, Mexico. Known for its production of ceramic pots, Mata Ortiz is located south of the Paquimé archaeological zone in Casas Grandes, at the foothills of an area now controlled by cartels. The village and its ceramicists have suffered greatly from the escalating violence in the region. Over the course of 18 months, Margolles collaborated with a group of artisans to produce thousands of square-shaped ceramic forms, each representing a victim. Sourced from deposits at the base of this mountainous zone, the clay pieces were darkened with a traditional firing technique using smoke from burning cow manure, and then hand-burnished with a stone to an almost glass-like finish. For Margolles, the resulting charcoal hue “speaks of an experience of mourning for people killed in violent acts, both in Mexico and the United States—and a correlation of responsibility. The wall becomes a unifying black shroud that covers both countries”. Though based in Madrid, Spain, she has worked for many years in Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso. On 3/8/19, at Walmart on Gateway Boulevard in El Paso, a 21-year-old man from across the state, driven by his anger at a “Hispanic invasion,” showed up last Aug. 3 on a murder mission. Firing an assault rifle, he killed 22 people and injured another 24. Walmart stopped selling certain classes of ammunition after the massacre, but not all, so Margolles purchased a box of Winchester 12-gauge shells. In her large-format photograph of the shells “Super Speed / El Paso, Texas” (2020) bright red shells with shiny metal ends are jumbled on a black surface in a pile that reminds of a human heart. The box of 25 shells cost $5.48, plus tax. Ms. Margolles paid cash. The original receipt is on view next to the image. It will fade during the show’s run, as receipts do, but you can take away your own reproduction, enlarged to poster size, from a stack at the gallery entrance. To create the series entitled “El Brillo” shards of glass collected from sites where violent acts occurred were hand-embroidered into high-fashion garments by New York-based designers. Containing fragments stitched into fine velvet, each piece is embellished with a tangible outcome of violence wrought by the U.S.-manufactured arms and munitions that proliferate on the border. Two concrete benches within the main gallery space, entitled “Dos bancos” are made from a mixture of cement and material absorbed from the ground where a person was shot dead in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The work’s composition is inseparable from the site of homicide, and its broader context within a city whose economic proximity to the U.S. has ushered in decades of conflict due to organized crime and unsanctioned, transnational political exercises. The work invites a deeper relationship with the mortal consequence of the military industrial complex and marginality reinforced by global economic policy, calling upon the viewer to bear witness to suffering otherwise rendered incomprehensible.

Info: James Cohan Gallery, 48 Walker Street, New York, Duration: 10/1-29/2/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.jamescohan.com