Portrait of the artist. Photo by Graeme Robertson/The Guardian.
James Cohan is proud to announce the unveiling of Teresa Margolles’ Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) as the latest Fourth Plinth commission in Trafalgar Square. The artist’s monumental public sculpture was unveiled to the public earlier this morning in London as part of London Sculpture Week, a collaboration between Sculpture in the City, Frieze and The Line London.
The powerful artwork, which is the 15th work to be installed on the plinth, stands for the rights of transgender communities worldwide. The sculpture is made up of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. It is also a tribute to one of the artist’s friends, a transgender woman named Karla. In December 2015, Karla was murdered in Juárez, Mexico. A fixture of the trans community in Juárez, Karla’s death was a huge loss, and her murder remains unsolved.
The arrangement of the casts around the plinth references the form of a Tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilizations typically used to display the remains of war captives or sacrifice victims. The work will begin to naturally age while on the Fourth Plinth, with the detail of the faces slowly fading as the plaster is exposed to London’s weather.
The casts were made in Mexico City and Juárez, Mexico; and London, UK, working closely with community groups across Mexico and the UK including Micro Rainbow and QUEERCIRCLE. The casts have been created by applying plaster directly onto the faces of participants, meaning that as well as recording their features the plaster is infused with their hair and skin cells.
Teresa Margolles is a conceptual artist, photographer, videographer, and performance artist from Mexico. She is known for her work around social justice and marginalized communities, and previously has represented Mexico at the Venice Biennale in 2009. She has also had work in the main curated exhibition in 2019 and is featured in this year’s Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere.
READ MORE ABOUT THE COMMISSION