A thought-provoking event took place in London’s Trafalgar Square on September 18, as Mexican artist Teresa Margolles unveiled her latest Fourth Plinth commission. Titled “Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)” (2024), the installation sheds light on the violence faced by transgender and nonbinary individuals in Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Margolles’s artwork is a powerful piece consisting of a rectangular prism adorned with 726 plaster face casts of trans and nonbinary individuals from Mexico City, Ciudad Juárez, and London. The installation bears a resemblance to a Mesoamerican tzompantli, a structure used to display the skulls of war captives or sacrifices in ancient rituals. Drawing from her background as a forensic pathologist and mortician in Mexico City, Margolles’s work often delves into themes of death, societal violence, and the impact of social and economic vulnerability in Central and South America.
The artist’s use of human remains and postmortem examination byproducts in her art serves as a stark reminder of human disposability and the trauma inflicted by narcoviolence and border brutality in Mexico. In “Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant),” Margolles pays tribute to her late friend Karla La Borrada, a trans woman, singer, activist, and retired sex worker whose unsolved murder in Ciudad Juárez in 2015 remains a haunting mystery.
Collaborating with LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in both Mexico and the UK, Margolles worked closely with community organizations to create this poignant installation. The plaster used to capture the faces of participants in the artwork retains traces of their skin cells, oils, hairs, and makeup, adding a personal touch to the piece. Over the 18-month display period, the faces will gradually lose their clarity and shape as the plaster weathers in London’s climate.
“Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)” marks the 15th commission to adorn Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth over the past 25 years. Previous installations by renowned artists have graced the plinth, with each piece adding a unique perspective to the public space. The Fourth Plinth commissions, initiated in 1998, aim to showcase contemporary art and engage the public in dialogue about important social issues.
As we look ahead, a commission by Tschabalala Self is set to grace the Fourth Plinth in 2026, continuing the tradition of using art to spark conversations and provoke thought in one of London’s most iconic locations. The world of technology is constantly evolving, with new advancements being made every day. One of the most exciting areas of technological innovation is the field of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation.
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