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The newest sculpture to take over Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth will be unveiled next week, and it’s an enormous monument to trans lives. The work, ‘Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)’ by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, will be a moving symbol of grief and solidarity made up of hundreds of plaster casts of the faces of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people.
The 850 mask-like casts (each individually taken by Margolles in Mexico and London) will be arranged around the plinth itself, rather than placed on top of it. And being made of plaster, they will slowly erode and disintegrate in the damp British weather.
Mexico has the second highest murder rate for trans and gender-diverse people in South America, while violence against those same groups in the UK only recently hit a record high. Margolles’s work is a powerful tribute to the victims of that violence and hatred, and a defiant statement against transfeminicide.
Margolles’s work will be in place for two years before being replaced by a work by American artist Tschabalala Self, with Romanian sculptor Andra Ursuta taking over in 2028. Find out more about both of those artworks here.
The new Fourth Plinth sculpture, ‘Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)’ by Teresa Margolles, will be unveiled on Sep 18. More details here.
Want more art? Here are the top ten exhibitions in London.
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