Teresa Margolles has created a memorial for the anonymous. While it seems like an impossible feat (how can we remember someone we never knew?), it is a concept that has been materializes with such intensity that it is felt instantly once the details become clear. In her work Plancha (2010), water from a morgue in Mexico City – water that is used to cleanse corpses – drips sporadically from above to a heated metallic surface below, where the impact produces a “hiss” and the water evaporates into the air. This charged water can be interpreted as representing the lost souls in the morgue, or perhaps, as representing their lives. As it enters into the realm of the living, we become instantly connected to these beings. We can feel this water in the air that we breathe, smell it as it engulfs the space around us. We become a part of the work and the work – as well as the beings that it represents – becomes a part of us.

With each hiss of water, someone is remembered. We may not know who the individual was, we may not know their story or their background, their name or their secrets, but we know that they existed, and that they mattered to someone. With each hiss of water, we remember the anonymous.

Amanda Beattie
DHC/ART Education

Photos: Richard-Max Tremblay