Looking at Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ 2009 Venice exhibition on narcoterrorism and what it tells us about appetite for drugs in the art world.
“I’m too dumb for Art,” is the sentence I’ve always proclaimed to my more creatively inclined friends. Yet those words concealed my secret underlying, slightly bigoted, sentiment, “Art is too dumb for me.” These feelings of mine are not directed towards the great renaissance paintings enveloping the walls of many a chapel. Neither are they directed towards the relatively more recent surrealism -I rather like Dali’s melting clocks – I think it’s especially relevant in our contemporary society. Rather my belligerence is mostly reserved for conceptual art.
Scores of tangled bedsheets with the label ‘the night after.’ Or a displayed receipt from a pharmacy aptly named ‘Capitalism.’ One particularly offending piece I saw in the Saatchi Gallery the artist called it a day by submitting her March calendar and calling it ‘time.’ Needless to say, I can give innumerable examples of so-called ‘Conceptual’ art pieces that are so ridiculous that the fact they are displayed in galleries is an art form in itself. (The only exception is Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, which I must profess – I giggled when I first laid eyes on).
On a recent visit to the Tate modern I became so self-assured in my stance that I felt I had something to prove against the micro-beanie wearing, Jolene Coffee wielding, Fin-tech podcast harking Hackney crowd whom I was sharing the space with. I needed to prove what a pile of elitist shit conceptual art was, so I picked out the most visually ridiculous piece I caught on display, snapped a picture of the plaque annotating name and artist, then went home to research. My victim was Teresa Margolles, and her piece was called ‘Flag I’. At first glance, it can only be described as being – a muddy flag. With my ridicule at the ready, all kinds of adjectives swamped my mind to begin my description of the flag for this blogpost. Google loaded, and I typed. What I found instead of validating my ridicule, has completely shifted my opinion on what conceptual art can be, and when done right, the kind of stories it can tell.
Teresa Margolles was born in 1963, in Culiacan, Mexico. Starting off as a forensic pathologist for many years, she transitioned into the art world with these themes still in mind. Her work focuses a lot on death – usually the violent kind – places of death, and the suffering of those left behind.
I usually uphold the holy constitution of not speaking on exhibitions I have not personally visited but have decided to break my silence on this occasion. I believe the for this exhibit, the message is bigger than the sum pieces of the art.
For those crude philistines like me, yet unfamiliar with the Venice Biennale, it’s a bi-annual art and architecture festival, considered quite important for those in the ‘know.’ Alternating annually between Architecture exhibitions and Contemporary Art exhibitions. In 2009 it was the stage for Margolles’ exhibition ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? In English, What Else Could We Talk About?
First seen hung outside the Mexican Pavilion’s entrance, through photos I can see the distinct brown of the aforementioned flag. What you’ll be shocked to hear though, is that the flag wasn’t always brown. Starting off as a pristine white cloth, Margolles spent many weeks in Mexico’s northern region, near the US border. This is the region in Mexico most affected by narcoterrorism. Margolles’ choice here was deliberate. She asked local residents for directions to the scenes of recent violence, namely shootings and decapitations (Bandera), carried out by drug cartels. Once found she would place this white cloth over the graves and bodies of the deceased, leaving the white to be stained brown and red by the dirt on site as well as the blood seeping from the bodies. The more gravesites found, the more permanent this brown colour became. One cannot help but be reminded by the Shroud of Turin. The Sacramental ritual of covering a body in white cloth, staining it with the violence of a death.
She also collected glass fragments, usually left after a shooting. She copied narcomensajes – messages left by gang members on a dead body – and she gathered blood. With the glass fragments, she made beautiful jewellery. With the messages, she embroidered the words with gold thread in this pieces of this bloodied fabric. And with the blood, it was added to the mixture used to mop the floor of the exhibition space. This mopping ritual was done daily. People at the time reported a strange smell coming from the pavilion. Whether this is from mopping of the floor, or from the rain outside causing blood to trickle down from the flag hanging there, one cannot say.
This is not some one-time event to reflect on with despair, this is a continuous struggle faced in Mexico. At the time of this exhibition there were a reported 8,281 deaths related to organised crime. Over a decade later that number has risen to over 28,000 deaths linked to the narcotics trade in 2020.
What we are left with is a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. I can only imagine visiting the pavilion then and perhaps pondering on my personal relationship with drugs. How many people had I perhaps harmed in my own consumption of substances? This has always been part of my problem with art. The hypocrisy is particularly blaring. Artists currently must have money and contacts in order to make it, by default making them almost always part of an incredibly privileged class. Yet, they say to be poor is to live and many have internalised this sentiment. For they enjoy drawing inspiration from these communities. A kind of crude and cruel cosplay they do, of being working-class.
Walter Sickett, an incredibly affluent Victorian gentleman, painting female prostitutes paying them meagre wages to be his models. Showcasing these pieces and decades later being called ‘ground-breaking’ for his choice of muse. Painting them as he sees them and not some kind of romanticised version. Balenciaga selling Moroccan inspired Blegha slippers for an obscene price. Only for the ultrawealthy to dress like Moroccan shepherds, whose income, and ultimately way of life, has been threatened by supermarkets. Property owners in Granada, baiting tourists to spend money on Flamenco shows. Meanwhile, the dance originated from ostracized gypsy communities in the south of Spain, who have been forced out of their original dwellings by these property owners. The world is full of those more fortunate profiting off the culture of those less fortunate, but it’s ok because it’s all just showcasing art, right? Far be it from me to say who is allowed to tell what stories to whom, but isn’t there something morbid about the elite profiting further on culture they themselves were the ones to first reject?
Upon reading about this flag, this exhibition, and this artist; I realised this wasn’t that familiar brand of hypocrisy. For Margolles, it was deeper than just this. It was a comment on the art worlds’ culture and the very core foundation it’s bult upon, altered states of consciousness. As far back as the opium dens frequented by those ‘tortured’ artists, to prominent figures like Andy Warhol suggesting that drugs are part of his creative genius. Its insatiable appetite for out of body experiences has led to more permeant out of body experiences for many Mexican’s. As well as those further afield, globally. Deaths within those less economically fortunate communities that have become involved in the drug production chain in a hopeless bid to economically keep up with the rest of the world. Namely South America, the Balkans, and Central Asia. In an America where Northern appetites fuel Southern deaths, what else could we talk about?