Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square showing Mil Veces un Instante (Picture: Guy Smallman)
Teresa Margolles’s Mil Veces un Instante (a thousand times an instant) was unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square last week.
It shows the life masks of 726 transgender and gender non-conforming people.
The sculpture is Margolles’s tribute to her friend Karla La Borrada, a Mexican trans woman, musician and sex worker who was murdered in 2015.
The masks are presented with the internal side facing out. Margolle confronts us with questions of trans people’s place in society, and reasons for their absence.
Margolles trained as a forensic pathologist and draws on the Tzompantli, a skull rack from human sacrifices.
This angles the piece towards discussion of death, of presence after death, and the place of death in contemporary society. The installation also draws on death masks, and particularly a mask associated with L’Inconnue de la Seine, a woman who was fished out of the Seine in the 1880s.
The woman’s identity became a topic of frenzied speculation. The reaction to the artwork in some circles was all too predictable.
Some criticised it as part of Sadiq Khan’s plan to infiltrate “British culture.” Others have demanded to know “when does actual femicide get a mention?”
Such arguments emphasise why Margolles’s installation is necessary.
This artwork should stand as a visual reminder of loss, tragedy and where division leads us.
It is a display of international solidarity—the seed of which is a tribute to a trans woman who dedicated her life to her community. It is exactly the culture we should strive for.
