Relic Aesthetics

Human Remains in the Work of Teresa Margolles

Abstract

Teresa Margolles started incorporating human remains and forensic fluids in her artistic practice while working as a medical examiner in the Mexico City Morgue during the 1990s. Art critics often refer to these works as relics or relic-like because of their exceedingly corporeal nature, but have failed to interrogate this term or understand its history in the study of religion and art. This article considers these works relics and analyzes three textiles Margolles embroidered with the help of collaborators bearing bloodstains from murder victims. Surprisingly, all three textiles aim to commemorate the dead, the three designs negotiate the visible bloodstains in different ways: choosing to incorporate, obscure, or foreground the stains, respectively. I argue that these three variations show that the material significance of human remains and their contextualization far exceeds the aesthetic choices made on behalf of the artist and her collaborators to affect the viewer. This relationship between material and design represents a form of bargaining in meaning-making present in the display of all relics, secular and religious.