DESAPARECER – Margolles & Arizpe
Curated by Oscar Sanchez
EL AGUA DE LA CIUDAD
Teresa Margolles
Video 2″ loop / Ciudad Juarez México
Cortesia de la artista / 2017
Pictures of the Exhibition
Photocredits Marcus Zobl 2017
En la última década, Teresa Margolles (Culiacán, Sinaloa) ha centrado su práctica artística en Ciudad Juárez, México., una de las ciudades de mayor flujo económico y fronterizo entre EEUU y Mexico. Juárez ha sido trágicamente conocida en los últimos veinte años por las desapariciones y los brutales asesinatos de cientos de mujeres, conocidos como feminicidio, y por la impunidad de los asesinos debida a la inacción de las autoridades. Desde los años noventa, los sucesivos gobiernos de la ciudad con el objetivo de recuperar el centro histórico han llevado a cabo una limpieza social silenciada desplazando a negocios y vecinos. Este hecho da prueba de la violencia que se ejerce sobre los sectores más vulnerables de la sociedad. En los últimos años, casas y negocios han sido cerrados y demolidos, entre ellos numerosos clubes nocturnos y discotecas, debido a la guerra entre carteles del narco, a las decisiones gubernamentales y a la especulación inmobiliaria. En este trabajo muestra la indiferencia ante callejización, el abandono a las persona vulnerables, y el alto número de exclusión social.
In den letzten zehn Jahren konzentrierte sich Teresa Margolles (Culiacan, Sinaloa) in ihrer Arbeit auf Ciudad Juarez, Mexiko, einer der Städte die vom großen wirtschaftlichen Geldfluss zwischen den USA und Mexiko profitieren. In den letzten zwanzig Jahren wurde Ciudad Juárez vornehmlich durch die brutalen Verschleppungen und Morde an hunderten Frauen bekannt, Femizid genannt. Die Straflosigkeit der Mörder basierend auf der Untätigkeit der Behörden ist tragischer Weise bekannt. Seit den neunziger Jahren versucht die Stadtverwaltungen sukzessive eine soziale Säuberung um das historische Zentrum herum durchzuführen. Kleinunternehmer und Nachbarn werden zum Schweigen gebracht und verdrängt. Diese Tatsache zeugt von der Gewalt der die Schwächsten der Gesellschaft ausgeliefert sind. In den letzten Jahren wurden Häuser und Geschäfte geschlossen und abgerissen, darunter viele Nachtclubs und Diskotheken, die Opfer der Kriege zwischen Drogenkartellen, Regierungsentscheidungen beziehungsweise Immobilienspekulation wurden.
Diese Arbeit zeigt die Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber dem Strassenleben der einfachen Menschen, der in Vergessenheit geratenen verwundbaren Personen und die hohe Anzahl der sozial ausgegrenzten.
Based on information from El Diario de Ciudad Juarez, in the publication of Monday, October 31, 2016, they are found in the mass grave without identifying 2,797 bodies. The Attorney General’s Office (FGE) ordered his burial.
Basada en la información de El Diario de Ciudad Juarez, en la publicación del lunes 31 de octubre del 2016, Se encuentran en la fosa común sin identificar 2 mil 797 cuerpos. La Fiscalía General del Estado (FGE) ordenó su inhumación.
Basierend auf der Inbformation in El Diario aus CiudadJuarez vom 31.10.2016 sind in einem Massengrab bisher 2797 Körper indentifiziert worden.
Teresa Margolles, 2017
El acto de desaparecer
Ocultar, quitar de la vista, dejar un lugar -el mago hizo desaparecer un reloj.-
Dejar de existir -había desaparecido toda la confianza entre ellos.-
Detener y retener ilegalmente la policía o los militares a una persona sin informar de su paradero -los militares desaparecieron al resto de su familia.-
Todos los significados que se asocian al acto de desaparecer no bastan
al hablar el hecho de desaparecer en México, donde no solo representa estar
muerto. Este acto en el Mexico de la ultima década va mucho mas allá, desaparecer es ser un muerto con vida o un fantasma al que no podemos ver ni desearle que descanse en Paz.
La Obra de Gina Arizpe nos lleva a explorar ese sufrimiento que es el desaparecer. Teresa Margolles, en esta ocasión nos presenta una pieza que marca una de las problemáticas mas fuertes de nuestro mundo: la migración.
Su obra nos habla sobre la responsabilidad de ambas partes en del conflicto de la migración y la deportación. Como explica la artista: “hay países que ponen las armas y otros ponen los muertos.”
The act of disappearing hiding, removing your eyes from something, leaving a place – the magician made disappear a clock – ceasing to exist – the trust between them has disappeared – the police or the military illegally arresting and holding a person without informing his/hers whereabouts – the military eradicate the rest of his/her family – All optional meanings of disappearing are not, however, enough when talking about the fact of disappearing in Mexico, where it not only represents to be dead. This act, in the Mexico of the last decade, goes much further. Disappearing, is like the living dead, or like a phantom we cannot see and cannot let rest in peace. Gina Arizpe’s work invites us to explore this pain, which is the disappearance.
Oscar Sanchez, 2017
In “Desaparecer” (disappear), Teresa Margolles raises the topic of censorship and corruption in art and politics using as an example the Biennale di Venezia 2009, to which she had been admitted. ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?) commented on the political division and rampant drug-related violence in Mexico. The artist’s own experience as a founding member of the country’s Forensic Medical Service allowed access to government morgues, giving her space to develop conceptual, socially-based art with bodily substances: cadavers, morgue water, and blood. Disturbing, perhaps, though genuinely thought-provoking. By exhibiting macabre artifacts like blood stained clothes, like notes left by assassins threatening “look, survive, and die,” Margolles’ installation was a blunt admission of the elephant in the room that no one in Mexico can deny, no matter how hard the president, media, and foreign boosters try. Who is counting the dead in the first place? How reliable is the media coverage? Inserting her artistic voice into the vicious cycle of violence, Margolles aims to ‘activate back those materials’ in the face of the art world and the consumers of Mexican-managed drugs in the United States and Europe.
Her work has been censured in Venice. The discussion has gone too far. But who else than artists can and will start discussions like that?
Related on the project from 2009 Teresa Margolles will again point out the obviousness of political and economical corrupt connections and criminal links. Margolles also discusses the links between Mexican and American business, politics and drug business, and the cluttered statements of the media and politicians.
Gina Arizpe
Gina Arizpe is working on the subject of the missing women of Mexico. In the last 10 years in mexico have been more than 30000 disappearances of people, acts that have violated the lives thousands of families, who have seen the need to search for mass graves throughout the country.
This search for human remains is the hope of the family to find some clue about to what happened to the person who is missing. Locked in oblivion, simply dissolved. This trace search without traces is a form to commemorate the nameless. The history of the so-called black holes, where people disappear, are known as the Bermuda Triangle of Mexico. The fact of the disappearance has also found its way into the jokes, that is, a well-known, but neither combated nor reprocessed phenomenon.
The involvement of the Narco scene with politics, society and economy makes this issue a complex danger zone for all. The financial dependency of drug traffickers, the fear of reprisals or murder, the opacity of the system, makes it difficult to change the situation. For artists from these regions, political and social issues have long been a topic that has been influential in their work.
“In 2018, we celebrate the eightieth anniversary of the Mexican Solidarity Declaration against the German National Regime of the Nazis in Austria. Before this anniversary, I would like to take the opportunity with Mexican artists and put the Mexican-Austrian affinity into a contemporary context.
The idea of ​​the dual concept is based on the fact that 2 different artistic expressions and demographic factors, respectively known artists, can present newcomers.
I have worked with Mexican artists such as Teresa Margolles for many years and I try to position them in my new home country Austria.
The supporting program will consist of artists’ talks, film screenings, workshops and discussion sessions. My goal is to present new varieties of Mexican art and to document social and political change and its influence on contemporary art. Before the 2018 anniversary, the Viennese and the Mexicans living in Vienna should consolidate their deep attachment over the years and found a new alliance.” Oscar Sanchez
In Cooperation with Embassy of Mexico & bka Kunst
