So it Vanishes ©Axel Schneider
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Lower Hutt’s Dowse Art Museum has cancelled an exhibition by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles because its use of water from a morgue.
The work titled, So It Vanishes, consists of filling an empty room with floating bubbles which, “creates a scene of unearthly beauty, underscored with a sense of unease when one realizes the water utilized has formerly been used to clean corpses”. So It Vanishes has been described as one of Margolles most important works.
Though the exhibition contains only trace elements of morgue water and there is not any public health concerns, the possibility of the exhibit sharing an adjacent space with one of the museum’s treasures, Nuku tewhatewha, was unsettling for many members of the Te Atiawa nation.
Nuku tewhatewha is one of only seven pataka – store houses, usually for food – built around the North Island to show support for the Kingitanga movement in the 1850s.
After months of “respectful conversation” with the Te Atiawa nation about Margolles’ exhibit, Dowse director Cam McCraken has decided to cancel the exhibition.
Read more at news.com.au.