Faces of transgender people adorn a new artwork in Trafalgar Square

An artwork featuring plaster face casts of hundreds of transgender and gender-variant people has been unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square, where over the next 18 months, its features will gradually erode by the weather.

Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ piece, Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant), is a 3.3-metric-ton cube adorned with “life masks” of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people.

Margolles has said that the artwork is a tribute to one of her friends, Karla La Borrada, a 67-year-old trans singer and former sex worker who was murdered in Ciudad Juárez nine years ago. The crime remains unsolved.

“We pay this tribute to her and to all the other people who were killed for reasons of hate,” the 61-year-old artist said. “But, above all, to those who live on, to the new generations who will defend the power to freely choose to live with dignity.”

Organisers of the project say the work will “naturally age” while on display, with the detail of the faces slowly fading as the plaster is exposed to the elements.

Each mask in artwork carries the name of the person it represents, with traces like lipstick smudges, false eyelashes and cuts clearly visible.

The Fourth Plinth, a 24-foot stone pedestal built in 1841 for a statue that was never completed, has hosted rotating artworks since 1999. Organised by the Mayor of London’s Culture Team,** Margolles is the 15th artist to be commissioned for an installation there.

Past installations have included a live interactive art project led by Antony Gormley, a sculpture of disabled artist Alison Lapper by Marc Quinn, and a scale model of Admiral Nelson’s HMS Victory inside a giant glass bottle by Yinka Shonibare.