Mexican artist Teresa Margolles takes over New York with two simultaneous exhibitions at MoMA and MoMA PS1

Mexican artist Teresa Margolles (b. 1963), trained as a forensic pathologist and photographer, is holding her first major museum exhibition in the United States — in two New York venues at once: MoMA PS1 in Long Island City and MoMA in Manhattan. The two exhibitions, curated by Ana Janevski and Inés Katzenstein, are a rare event in the contemporary art world.

“Teresa Margolles: En el lugar de los hechos (At the Scene)” opens at MoMA PS1 on September 24, 2026 and runs through February 8, 2027, with room-scale installations, a new commission, sculptures, photographs and video spanning three decades of work. Among the most striking works are 13 tons of rubble from a demolished house in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, torn down in June 2012; “Air” (2003/26), which mists the gallery with water mixed with organic materials from sites of violence; and “Receipt” (2020), an enlarged receipt for a box of 25 bullets bought at a Walmart in El Paso — four months after a white supremacist killed 23 people there in 2019, as MoMA’s press office announces.

At the same time, MoMA in Manhattan hosts “Teresa Margolles: Aproximación al lugar de los hechos (Approaching the Scene)” in Gallery 212, from September 25, 2026 through spring 2027. At its center stands a large sculpture of seven heated steel plates, onto which drips water mixed with organic substances collected from sites of violence — the water produces a sharp hiss and steam, turning the gallery into a disturbing scene of memory.

Margolles’s work has for decades dealt with transnational violence, disappearances, murders, political displacements and social neglect, with a particular focus on the US–Mexico border, according to Arte al Día. The exhibition is expected to confirm Margolles as one of the most powerful voices in Latin American contemporary art, while NY Art Life calls the doubling of exhibitions across two museums a strong statement about how transnational memory is treated in American institutions.