Teresa Margolles

James Cohan is pleased to present Portrait, an exhibition of new work by Teresa Margolles, on view from October 10 through November 1, 2025, at the gallery’s 48 Walker Street location. This is Margolles' third solo exhibition with James Cohan. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Friday, October 10, from 6-8 PM.

Teresa Margolles’ Portrait is a photographic installation that presents the viewer with the lasting presence of individuals from the trans+ community in Mexico and the United Kingdom. Comprised of 735 photographs, Portrait captures a profound act of preservation, honoring the individuality and lived experiences of each participant. Margolles casts the subjects’ faces in plaster to create improntas, imprints or masks. These casts are photographed at 1:1 scale, immortalizing every detail from makeup and facial hair to the subtle textures of skin. This serves as a tribute to the enduring identities of those whose existence remains under threat.

Created with the participants of the artist’s Fourth Plinth commission Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) in Trafalgar Square, London, Portrait uses a grid-like format reminiscent of Margolles’ earlier works to create a serial rhythm that both unifies and differentiates the many faces. The structure echoes the language of architecture and order, yet within this, each face interrupts the possibility of repetition. This visual tension between sameness and specificity, anonymity and self, drives the emotional force of the installation. The grid does not flatten the identities it holds; instead it frames them in a space where they can be seen clearly, powerfully, side by side, not as statistics or symbols, but as people. In Margolles’ words, “Every face has a story attached.” Portrait serves as a tribute to Karla, a singer who was one of the artist’s dear friends. In December 2015, Karla was murdered in Juárez, Mexico, and her murder remains unsolved today. She was a pillar of the trans community.

While casting the improntas, Margolles created a suite of Polaroid photographs that serve as both physical artifacts and visual testaments to the exchanges she had with the sitters. Each session unfolded as a space for testimony beginning with Margolles speaking of her friend Karla, to whom the project is dedicated, and opening a space for the participant’s own story to emerge. The Polaroids, which were intervened on by the artist to create glitches, multiplications and distortions, hold aura not only as singular physical objects but as vessels that capture the full presence, life, and spirit of each individual.

In the front gallery, the installation 28 Cuerpos, 2015-2025, presents delicate remnants of threads used to sew up bodies after their autopsies. Each of the threads stitched together between two gallery walls is a gesture of remembrance representing a particular person who has had their life taken. This act carries the weight of grief, thoughtfully marking the absence of lives lost and the ongoing threat faced by those pushed to the margins of society. Together, the individual threads form a boundary or barrier whose material composition invokes attention.