Teresa Margolles has installed a glittering jewel-like pavement at the heart of the city's contemporary club scene. Like her gallery-based installations which play with the language of minimalist sculpture, the aesthetics of the piece are a deliberate strategy designed to seduce the viewer. For Margolles, the exquisite, the beautiful, provides the means to confront us with realities we would prefer to ignore or forget. Margolles’ pavement is constructed from broken glass collected from scenes of violent drug-related crimes in both her native Mexico and other Central and South American countries. The choice of material is particularly resonant. Glass is ubiquitous. An essential part of the routine fabric of our lives, glass presents a transparent face to the world, an unremarkable surface to be looked through or walked upon. It is only in the act of its breaking that it suddenly becomes visible; its fragments shatter the apparent stability and transparency of the everyday. Sorcha Carey

Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial International 06 Supported by Northwest Development Agency Visiting Arts Arup Lighting