Teresa Margolles has been chosen as the winner of the Artes Mundi 5 prize. The winner was announced in an evening ceremony at National Museum Cardiff, from a shortlist of 7,by a panel of judges chaired by curator and broadcaster Tim Marlow. With a first prize of £40,000, Artes Mundi is the largest cash prize awarded for the arts in the UK and one of the most significant in the world. The exhibition, which opened in October has already had 30,000 visitors.
The Panel of judges, chaired by curator and broadcaster Tim Marlow, commended the work of all seven nominated artists, but were particularly struck by “the visceral power and urgency as well as the sophistication of her work in confronting an on-going human tragedy”.
Teresa Margolles’ work focuses on Northern Mexican social experience where drug-related crime has resulted in widespread violence and murder. Since graduating with a diploma in forensic medicine, Margolles has examined the economics of death and her sculptural interventions and performances often bring the physical reality and materiality of death to the fore, exemplified in her artistic intervention during the 2009 Venice Biennale in which the floor of the Mexican pavilion was mopped with water used to wash dead bodies from a morgue in Mexico.
