Teresa Margolles, Jewels, 2009, Jewels made with gold and fragments of windshields collected at murder sites in Mexico. Documentation of the Jewels in Culiacan city, Mexico, Spring 2009.
MEXICAN PAVILION
53RD International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di VeneziaTeresa Margolles
¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?)
7 June - 22 November 2009
53rd INTERNATIONAL
ART EXHIBITION -
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2009
Rota Ivancich Palace
Castello 4421
(close to San Marco square)
30122 Venice
CURATOR
Cuauhtémoc Medina
VENUE
Rota Ivancich Palace
Castello 4421 (close to San Marco square)
30122 Venice
CATALOGUE
A catalogue will be published, including essays by well known authors such as Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ernesto Diezmartinez Gumàn, Elmer Mendoza, Antonio Escohotado, Mariana Botey.
SPONSOR
The pavilion is sponsored by The National Council For Culture And The Arts (CONACULTA), The Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), The National University of Mexico (UNAM), Patronato Del Arte Contemporaneo (PAC)
Mexico presents its second official national representation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, on June 7 through November 22, 2009. The pavilion will be located in the historic Rota Ivancich Palace, built in the 16th century, next to Querini Stampalia Foundation, close to San Marco square, in the heart of Venice.
The pavilion will host a solo show by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles titled ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?) which involves of a single and continuous intervention, with different actions and works along the pavillion. The show is curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina.
Teresa Margolles's work, despite its controversial character, has increasingly been exhibited in different venues and around the world, includying the Liverpool Biennial (2006), The Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (2007), La Colección Jumex, Mexico (2007) and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2008).
The works presented at the Mexican Pavilion are a subtle chronicle of the effects of a devilish international economy: the vicious circle of prohibition, addiction, accumulation, poverty, hatred and repression that transmogrifies the transgresive pleasures and puritan obsessions of the North into the South as Hell.
The show will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published in English and in Spanish with texts by the curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ernesto Diezmartínez Guzmán writer and cinema's critic; Luis Astorga reasearcher for Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM; Elmer Mendoza writer; Sergio González Rodríguez, writer; Antonio Escohotado Spanish philosopher; Mariana Botey Mexican artist and theorists and an interview about the realisation of the exhibition of the artist by Taiyana Pimentel and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
In 1990 Teresa Margolles (Mexico, 1963) was a founding member of the group SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service) and has in this capacity since held performances, made installations, objects and videos and intervened in public places. Later on, she continued working on her own using the morgue as a laboratory and study, developing social and conceptual artistic strategies on the basis of the use of bodily substances and images of corpses. Her exploration of death as a subject, has been related to a ever deepening research on issues of economic and political unequalities, social exploitation, the process of historical mourning and the way extended violence defines the cultural and philosophical landscape of today.
Due to the recent upsurge of violence in Mexico - according to the press, in 2008 more than 5000 people lost their lives in executions and shootings related to drug trafficking and its combat - Teresa Margolles's work, that for almost two decades has concentrated in the exploration of the artistic possibilities of human remains, has put an increasing emphasis in the meditation on violent death and its victims.
Margolles most recent work involve a subtle and moving chronicle of the pervasive economy of death that plagues the north of Mexico.
In the last two years, she had focused in creating installations, paintings and objects departing from the material traces of killings in the streets and the associated verbal production taken from execution notes, police reports and press accounts of violence.
¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? will be a narrative based on tactics of contamination and material actions, which will seek to emotional and intellectually involve the visitors in the issues surrounding the way violence and the current global economy involve the effective declaration of whole generations of individuals as a virtually disposable social class, trapped in between the perverse logic of criminality, capitalism and prohibition. The Pavillion project will be accompanied by a number of public actions which will extend the concept of her participation to the venues of the Venice Biennale and the city.
CONTACT
Simona Pezzano
email: pezzano.simona@gmail.com
mobile: +39-347 0884713
