mexico city
What Else Could We Talk About
Installation by Teresa Margolles, Mexican Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009. The installation consisted of large fabric banners — made from fabric soaked in the blood of murder victims and sewn by women in Ciudad Juárez — that were carried through the streets of Venice in a procession each morning, then hung in the pavilion. Gallery attendants mopped the floors with water used to wash murder victims' bodies. The work made viscerally present the scale of femicide and drug-war violence in Mexico that mainstream media was not covering.
Scholarly Significance
Teresa Margolles's Venice Biennale installation — critical reception landmark; political context (Mexico's drug war violence).
Notes
- ·Margolles was the official representative of Mexico at the Venice Biennale despite the controversy.
- ·The Calderón government's drug war (2006-2012) had produced extreme levels of murder, particularly femicide in Ciudad Juárez.
- ·The performance of mopping with contaminated water meant visitors were unknowingly in contact with materials from violent death.
- ·The work won the Golden Lion Prize for the Best National Participation at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
- ·Critical response divided between those who saw the work as exploitative and those who regarded it as the most ethically urgent art of the biennale.