Teresa Margolles

From February 18 through May 25 El Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in the city of Madrid presents the exhibition entitled The Witness, a comprehensive exhibition of works by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles. The show consists of a series of works created in recent years that are the result of a research process initiated a decade ago in Ciudad Juárez. Margolles collected documents, catalogued images, sounds, testimonies and objects, as she attempted to convey through her work a symptomatic reality that is not exclusive to Ciudad Juárez or Mexico, but one that is part of a global reality. In her quest she has established a—asymmetric—dialog with the State, as she has pointed to the complex encounter between truth and the facts, and the manner in which we position ourselves as witnesses, spectators and antagonists of such facts. Centered on the work La Promesa (The Promise, 2012), one of the show's most emblematic pieces, the exhibition articulates through Margolles's gaze a space to reaffirm the testimonies of the social, economic and political reality in Mexico. More than trying to reconstruct past events based on remnants of that which was left behind, abandoned, the work by Margolles seeks a place from which to generate an alternative image that success in questioning the authority and legitimacy of the official image. The exhibition includes works like the video En Torno a la Pérdida (Surrounding Loss, 2009-2013), Esta Finca no Será Demolida (This Farm Will not Be Demolished, 2011), PM 2010 (2012) and El Testigo (The Witness, 2013), which gives its name to the show.