Larvarium
Grupo Semefo
This object was the sinister submission made by the Semefo group (the acronym of Mexico’s then-Servicio Médico Forense) to the 1992 Encuentro Nacional de Arte Joven [National Congress of Young Art], where it received an honorable mention. This sarcophagus, shown at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil with lingering remnants of soil and rust, represented Semefo’s decisive leap from the underground death metal scene to the contemporary art world.
It simultaneously symbolizes a gothic monstrification of the Duchampian ready-made and the transfiguration of the field of practices that suggest the death knell of aesthetics.
GRUPO SEMEFO (1990–1999)
Arturo Angulo Gallardo (1965), Juan Luis García Zavaleta (1961), Carlos López (1963), Teresa Margolles (1963), Juan Manuel Pernás (1969), Mónica Miroslava Salcido (1970)
Larvarium, 1992
Exhumed coffin, chains, and metal coat hangers
Acquisition, 2006
