Ballroom Marfa collaborated with Chalk the Block — a downtown El Paso public arts initiative — to install our recently commissioned video work by Teresa Margolles, Irrigación. Originally installed in Ballroom Marfa’s south gallery for the exhibition In Lieu of Unity, we worked with Kate Bonansinga, the director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and her students to realize the installation in El Paso.

Teresa Margolles’ practice exposes the current violence in Mexico, specifically along the Northern border. Irrigación involved documenting a moving image of a water truck on the road between Alpine, TX and Marfa, TX. Margolles filmed the truck from behind as it dispensed 5000 gallons of water mixed with blood, excrement, and other bodily matter that the artist collected from multiple sites of violence in Cd. Juarez. The automobile procession notes the waste of life to the waste of water in the desert.

The artist also selected various issues of Mexican periodicals that featured violence on their front page. All of them were published during the first quarter of 2010 when more than 500 people were murdered in Cd. Juarez. Each paper is preserved and presented in a forensic bag such as that used to gather evidence at a crime scene.