MARCO

(Culiacán, Mexico, 1963; lives and works in Mexico D.F.)

For 15 years Margolles has been dealing with what she calls ‘the follow up of the body after life, and the appropriation of human inert elements to understand death in its social dimension'. She has pursued such an aim by investigating the ‘life of the corpse', that is, the physical and social transformation of what we could call the after-body and its metaphoric power. Her work is always based on a peculiar artistic use of vestiges from dead human bodies or associated with them. As Klaus Görner and Udo Kittelmann have said, ‘death and its accompanying circumstances are not represented, but presented'. Yet death is not her end but the instrument for a moving social contestation: Margolles' main goal is neither anthropological nor macabre: it is political. Her work is a reaction to the increasing violence all over the world, and its daily presence in the media. On a more specific stance, it delves into the effects of growing criminality in Third World cities, and particularly in Mexico, often associated with drug and human traffics.

In this sense, Margolles' art deals with the stories behind dead bodies, not with death in abstract, or with ‘neutral' corpses. These are stories of violence and poverty, full of social overtones. Her systematic investigation took her from a direct, baroque, gruesome approach at the beginning of her career to a more conceptual, sober, even minimal poetics characteristic of her personal work today. She wants to make us aware of how death and violence are part of our daily life. Her current installations, videos and sound pieces are beautiful, neat, elegant. Her art is increasingly based on the contrast between beauty and terror, white-cube stylishness and dread.