Teresa Margolles’ work is an accumulation of violent acts, plotted through a complex memorial to lives lost and to sites where trauma continues to resonate and bare material traces of the violence perpetrated. In both Mexico and Australia, Margolles visited sites where women and trans women have been murdered. The blood that has soaked into the sites, the hair and body odour, are remembered amongst the sites other accumulated particles. These particles are collected through sponging the sites with water – collecting what residue remains – we are all witnesses. The water is incorporated into a process where a droplet of water – signifying an individual life – is fed through a water system that drops from a central irrigation pipe. Drop by drop onto the electric hot plate, the life evaporates but leaves a stain. Without directly using abject materials, Margolles re-articulates the absent body and the violence perpetrated against it through viscerally present materials, a red plastic butchers curtain, drops of water, and hot plates, creating a chain of events that remembers the losses through a signalling action that becomes visually accumulated moments.

She studied Communication Sciences and Forensic Medicine at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, starting her artistic career in the early 1990s. Ever since, she has been developing a powerful oeuvre that demands attention to violence, poverty and alienation, exposing the social and economic order that renders violent and destitute deaths an accepted normality.

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), Embassy of Spain and Galerie Peter Kilchmann. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich. National Art School collaborators: Terhi Hakola, Nathan Hale, Carolyn Lee