Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue

Abstract

Description Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue

By Dorian Vale

In this foundational essay, Dorian Vale situates Teresa Margolles within the Canon of Witnesses, a post-interpretive framework that honors artists whose works resist explanation and demand moral proximity. Focusing on Margolles’s use of bodily residue—blood, water from morgues, traces of violence—Vale examines how her practice subverts spectacle and refuses the comfort of metaphor.

Rather than aestheticizing death, Margolles preserves its aftermath. Her works do not speak for the dead—they let the materials of death remain unaltered, undecorated, and unresolvable. Through her installations, Vale argues, Margolles becomes a custodian of consequence: holding space for what cannot be revived, only witnessed.

Written through the lens of Post-Interpretive Criticism, this essay proposes that Margolles offers one of the most ethically alert practices in contemporary art. Her work is not political commentary—it is aftermath. And in that aftermath, she teaches the critic not to interpret, but to stand still.

Vale, Dorian. Canon of Witnesses: Teresa Margolles & The Ethics of Residue. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17070909

Teresa Margolles, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, Canon of Witnesses, contemporary Mexican artists, art and death, ethical art criticism, trauma in contemporary art, bodily residue in art, morgue water installations, art of aftermath, art and violence, mourning in installation art, witnessing through material, Teresa Margolles analysis, non-interpretive art writing, residue as aesthetic, ethics of witnessing, post-interpretive canon, slow art, sacred presence in contemporary art

This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)