Teresa Margolles

James Cohan is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Teresa Margolles. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at James Cohan The gallery will host

In her ongoing investigation of the social and aesthetic dimensions of conflict, Teresa Margolles visualizes the enduring weight of violence. By infusing artwork with material traces of loss, she shares the stories of the disenfranchised in ways that are acutely visceral, confronting viewers physically and emotionally.

For this exhibition, Margolles will present a series of painted ceramic vessels from her continued collaboration with artisans in the Northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, near the U.S./Mexico border. Located in the region near the prehistoric Paquimé archaeological zone or Casas Grandes (the place of the big houses) the ceramicists have suffered greatly from the escalating violence in the area.

This collaboration has resulted in a three-dimensional yearbook—12 painted vessels, one made each month over this past year—that visually recounts events affecting the population during this time. These vignettes depict contemporary cars and houses amid the geometric fretwork traditionally used in pre-Columbian Paquimé pottery, like the winding desert snake. Upon looking closely, the quidotian is violently disrupted by illustrations of car crashes, explosions, machetes, and skulls-and-crossbones—brutal scenes from a persistent conflict. There is a gun depicted on almost every pot.

In a community shaped by both the volatile conditions of war and the legacies of cultural tradition, each of these vessels is a powerful means of place-making. The pottery connects the artisans to the region’s past, as they work from the patterns found on the shards of ceramics made there over 500 years ago. The design and material compositions of the pots therefore assert both the villagers’ present-day survival and their steadfast attempts to understand a place that palpably echoes the past. In Margolles’s words: “Es una unión de cosmología y hechos sociales en un mismo plano – (It is a union of cosmology and social facts on the same plane).”

Teresa Margolles (b. 1963, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico) has exhibited internationally for more than two decades. In the last three years, Margolles has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Mattatoio, Rome (2022); Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani De Palma, Palma, Spain (2020); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City (2020); A new work by Teresa Margolles, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2018); Ya Basta Hijos de Puta, PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2018); and Mundos, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2017). Margolles has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Artes Mundi Prize and Prince Claus Award for Culture and Development in 2012. She represented Mexico at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and in 2019, she received a special jury mention for her work at the 58th Venice Biennale exhibition. Margolles’s most ambitious public project to date, the 2024 Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square in London, will be unveiled in September of that year.

Her work is held in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy; Colección Fundación ARCO, Madrid, Spain; FRAC Lorraine, Metz, France; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany; PérezArt Museum, Miami, FL; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; Tate Modern, London, UK and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.