Teresa Margolles and the Pathology of Everyday Death

This essay takes as its theme the fascination with the forensics of death as a focus of interest for artists and curators and looks in particular at the the work of Teresa Margolles, a Mexican artist who has attracted the attention of an increasingly large audience.

In discussing her work as an artist it is recognized that responses to it are interwoven with recognition of her training as a forensic technician and her role within the morgue in Mexico City. This essay questions in relation to Margolles, how important is the juxtaposition of geography and theme?; of death and Mexico? Is the combination of gender, geographical location and iconographic tradition of relevance in understanding responses to her work?

In this exploration of the theme of death and ‘Mexicanness’ I suggest that the cultural stereotypes created by writers such as Octavio Paz, Malcolm Lowry, and Surrealist Andre Breton in the early modernist period continue to have an impact on contemporary practice.

The research grows out of a long standing interest in questioning the relationship of contemporary practice to cultural stereotype. I was particularly interested in publishing this research in Spanish and Portuguese to reach audiences in Europe and Latin America.

Oriana Baddeley

Research Interests

Transnational Art, Mexican Art, Cultural Identity, Latin American Art, Cultural Hybridity

Profile
Oriana Baddeley is Professor of Art History and Director of Research at Camberwell College of Arts, and also Deputy Director of UAL Research Centre TrAIN - Transnational Arts, Identity & Nation. She studied History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex. Her doctoral subject formed the basis for work on the 1992 Hayward exhibition 'The Art of Ancient Mexico'.
She has written and published extensively on contemporary Latin American art, including 'Drawing the Line: Art & Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America' (Verso 1989, co-author Valerie Fraser). In 1996 she collaborated with Gerardo Mosquera and inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) to produce 'Beyond the Fantastic: Art Criticism from Contemporary Latin America' (InIVA/MIT 1996).
Recent publications include essays on ancient Mexican sources within early modern architecture in the Victoria & Albert Museum's 'Art Deco' catalogue (2003), and an investigation of contemporary responses to Frida Kahlo, commissioned for the Tate Modern retrospective exhibition in London (June 2005). In conjunction with the exhibition, she also organised an international conference exploring themes raised in this essay, The Many Faces of Frida.

Between 2001 - 2005, she has been working on a joint AHRB funded project on nation and identity, focusing on art and design of India, Mexico and Japan (University of Sussex, Chelsea College of Art & Design and Camberwell College of Arts). This lead to a major book project in collaboration with Toshio Watanabe and Partha Mitter entitled 'Nation, Identity and Modernity: Visual Culture of India, Japan and Mexico, 1860s -1940', forthcoming by Duke University Press (2007/08).