Congratulations to Teresa Margolles on her participation in NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, curated by Brook Andrew. The Biennale is open to the public from March 14 through June 8, 2020. Margolles' work will be on view at the National Art School.
For over twenty-five years, Teresa Margolles (b. 1963, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico) has investigated the social and aesthetic dimensions of conflict, creating sculptural installations, photographs, films, and performances imbued with material traces of trauma and loss. Working closely with communities precluded from access to systems of social care, Margolles explores the relationship between violence and marginality, especially in light of gender.
For NIRIN, Margolles has created Aproximación al lugar de los hechos (2020) which draws material reference to sites where violent acts took place in Sydney and its surrounding suburbs. To create this work, Margolles and a group of students from the National Art School in Sydney executed a series of performative actions in which they poured water onto the ground where homicides and the disappearances of women took place, absorbing the material traces of each violent act. Encircled in red industrial curtains, the resulting artwork is comprised of twenty steaming iron plates onto which drops of water laced with the material residue of violence fall from above.