Michela Coletta, University of Warwick
Exploring the exhibition ‘Ya basta hijos de puta’ in conversation with museum curator Diego Sileo.
PAC contemporary art museum, Milan, Italy
http://www.pacmilano.it/exhibitions/teresa-margolles/
Teresa Margolles (Culiacán, 1963) creates connections through her work that meticulously yet intimately show the blurriness of boundaries: between life and death, wealth and poverty, power and marginality, us and them. Her exhibition at PAC museum of contemporary art in Milan starts in the museum courtyard, where waiting crowds are sitting or leaning on her work Table and two benches (2007), a life-size cluster made of thick concrete. They are plain-looking everyday objects, commonly found in public spaces, which people instinctively gather around to interact, communicate and socialize. But what appears to be an unremarkable and untainted object hides the traces of social violence and death: the concrete has been mixed with materials from the spot where a corpse on the border of northern Mexico was found. This act of violence, which occurred in Mexico as a result of the drug war that has plagued the country for decades, silently insinuates itself into the everyday life of a European city through the global networks of consumption.
In Margolles’ work, the body is not an abstract notion; it carries a unique personal history, even when it is not materially present as such.
warwickhispanic 