London and the beautiful artwork commemorating trans victims of violence

A work of art that will gradually dissolve over 18 months

Recently unveiled in London, in Trafalgar Square to be precise, is a tribute to transgender victims of transphobic violence.

It is a large cube made up of the plaster faces of a hundred transgender people who have been victims of violence, and its peculiarity is that it will disappear over 18 months due to wind and rain.

The work in question was created by Teresa Margolles (a Mexican artist) and is called “Mil Vece un Instanto” (A Thousand Times in an Instant). It was unveiled on Wednesday in front of a large crowd, many of whom were from Margolles’ transgender community in Mexico.

A cube of around 3.6 tonnes, covered with 726 frontal masks representing transgender and gender non-conforming people from the UK and Mexico. The work is inspired by a tzompantli used in Mesoamerican civilisations until around 1200 AD. A tribute by Teresa Margolles to her friend Karla La Borrada, a transgender woman (67 years old), singer and prostitute, murdered in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) in 2015. A cold case of Mexican justice.

“We pay this tribute to her and to all the other people who have been killed for reasons of hate. But above all to those who are still alive, to the new generations who will defend the power to freely choose a life of dignity”. (Teresa Margolles).