Teresa Margolles at the 60th International Art Exhibition

Congratulations to Teresa Margolles on her participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. The exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, is on public view from April 20 through November 24, 2024 at the Giardini, the Arsenale, and various venues in Venice.

For over twenty-five years, Teresa Margolles has investigated the social and aesthetic dimensions of conflict, creating sculptural installations, photographs, films, and performances imbued with material traces of death. In her arresting work La Huella, 2019, the artist visually renders the continuously unfolding story of violence, disappearance, and unrest along the Colombian and Venezuelan border, a turbulent region to which Margolles has devoted years of work.

The silhouette’s brown hue is derived from the dried blood of a young Venezuelan man, killed at the Táchira River in Cúcuta on the Colombian side of the border. Placing the cloth over his body during the autopsy, Margolles allowed the blood from the man’s face, arms, torso, and legs to leave behind a lasting mark. The cloth becomes an indecipherable map or document with a strong material presence and the amount of blood bears witness not only to the violence inflicted upon this body, but also to the brutality experienced by thousands of Venezuelan migrants throughout their journey.