Teresa Margolles’ sculpture for the Fourth Plinth pays tribute to trans communities

Mexico-born artist, photographer, videographer and performance artist, Teresa Margolles, today unveiled her sculpture for London’s Fourth Plinth.

Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) is the 15th artwork to be installed on the Fourth Plinth since Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo in 1999. Created of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people, the work is a tribute to Margolles’ friend, a transgender woman named Karla murdered in Mexico in 2015.

Margolles, who made the sculpture in Mexico City, Juárez and London, worked with groups including Micro Rainbow and QueerCircle. The arrangement of the casts acknowledges the traditional structures of Tzompantli, skull racks from Mesoamerican civilisations created from remains of sacrificial victims, or war captives.

‘This collective sculpture, which brings together the faces of 726 people living in the United Kingdom and Mexico, stands not only as a display of resilience and humanity from the trans plus/non-binary community but also as a reminder of the murders and disappearances that still occur, especially in Latin America,’ says Margolles. ‘Through this structure, there is a return to the human, the primal, the sacred. This year marks the ninth anniversary of the unpunished murder of Karla, a transgender woman who was a folk musician, a sex worker, an artistic collaborator, and a friend of mine. She was murdered on December 22, 2015 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. We pay this tribute to her and to all the other people who were killed for reasons of hate. But, above all, to those who live on, to the new generations who will defend the power to freely choose to live with dignity.’

The Fourth Plinth is funded by the Mayor of London with support from Arts Council England and Bloomberg Philanthropies

london.gov.uk