Teresa Margolles
Lote Bravo

Lote Bravo

© 2005 Teresa Margolles

Lote Bravo
Lote Bravo
ArtistMexican, born 1963
CultureMexican
Titles
  • Lote Bravo
Date2005
PlaceMexico
Medium400 handmade adobe mud bricks made out of soil in which the bodies of murdered women were buried
DimensionsDimensions variable, each brick: 15 3/4 × 9 13/16 × 3 15/16 (40 × 25 × 10cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the 2007 Latin American Experience Gala and Auction, Mary and Roy Cullen, Sofia Adrogué, P.C. and Sten Gustafson, Celina and Alfredo Brener, Brad and Leslie Bucher, Eduardo and Eugenia Grüneisen, Bruce and Diane Halle, Gonzalo Parodi, and Robert J. Card M.D. and Karol Kreymer in honor of Gilbert Vicario
Object number2007.1855
Not on view

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Object Type
Description

Teresa Margolles creates art that addresses the transition between life and death that she encountered through her work as a lab technician at the state-run forensic medical services agency in Mexico City know as SEMEFO. In past projects she has collected recycled water from the morgue to create ephemeral installations out of soap bubbles and mist.


Turning her attention north, Margolles focuses on the astounding number of women found murdered along the Mexico/U.S. border near Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. In the 2005 video work Lote Bravo, Lomas de Poleo, Anapra y Cristo Negro, Margolles displays empty roads, dirt lots, and desert gullies to provide a glimpse into the isolated landscape of the region. This related piece features rough, brick-like objects from sand that Margolles collected from more than 100 locations in and around Ciudad Juárez where corpses of sexually abused women have been found. Although the numbers of bricks cannot be correlated to the numbers of missing women, they nonetheless stand as silent witnesses.


ProvenanceThe artist; [Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich]; sold to MFAH, 2007.
Exhibition History"Indelible Images (trafficking between life and death)", Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 5, 2005–April 23, 2006.

"North Looks South: Building the Latin American Art Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 7–September 27, 2009.

"Phantom Bodies: The Human Aura in Art," The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville,
October 30, 2015–February 14, 2016; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, June 17–September 11, 2016.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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