'Pistas de Baile' is a photographic series by Teresa Margolles that depicts trans sex workers standing in the ruins of demolished nightclubs in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Each subject poses on...
"Pistas de Baile" is a photographic series by Teresa Margolles that depicts trans sex workers standing in the ruins of demolished nightclubs in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Each subject poses on the last remaining fragment of a dance floor where they once worked: a site of convergence between labor, eroticism, and violence.
Since the introduction of NAFTA in the 1990s, Margolles has worked closely with at-risk communities in Ciudad Juárez, a border city whose economic proximity to the U.S. has ushered in decades of conflict due to organized crime. In recent years, the city council has demolished hundreds of bars and nightclubs within its historic center, hoping to encourage tourism and construct a ‘new face’ for the neighborhood.
Separated from public life by social and institutional mechanisms, the trans community in Ciudad Juárez lacks access to systems of social care and is particularly vulnerable to crime. Having relied on clubs and bars for protection, the systematic demolition of these spaces has exposed these individuals to brutality, police harassment, and murder.
This suite of 16 photographs is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.
Teresa Margolles: En la Herida, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, November 24, 2019 - February 9, 2020 (Large size) 20 Years, James Cohan, New York, NY, November 1 - December 20, 2019 Teresa Margolles: Ya Basta Hijos de Puta, PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, March 28 - June 10, 2018 Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins, Barbican Art Gallery, London, England, February 28 - May 27, 2018 Pistas de Baile, organized by PHotoESPAÑA, CentroCentro, Madrid, Spain, May 31 - September 17, 2017
Literature
UBS Art, "Collecting Works: Hasnaine Yavarhoussen," 2023, 4 min 12 sec.https://www.ubs.com/global/en/our-firm/art/2023/hasnaine-yavarhoussen.html. Features Teresa Margolles's Pista de balle del Club "Nancy's (Cuca)”, 2016, at 1m50s. Cruz, Jorge Sánchez. "Trans* (Dis)appearance at the Mexican Frontier: Reading Refusal in Teresa Margolles's Ya basta hijos de puta (2018)." TSQ: Transgender studies Quarterly 9, no. 4 (2022): 540-562, pp. 541-3, 549, 551, 553-5, 559.
Publications
Wilson-Goldie, Kaelen. Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War. New York City, Columbia Global Reports, 09/06/2022.
Zeppetelli, John et al., Teresa Margolles: Mundos, MAC, Montreal Gale, Matthew, Tate Modern: The Handbook, Tate Publishing, London