Spanish conceptualist sculptor and performance artist Santiago Sierra (b.1966) won’t talk about his background or have his portrait taken, yet for someone so seemingly shy his works are very contentious and often extremely confronting.
His performances focus on the inequality of the social and economic systems using the marginalised of society, such as the unemployed, dispossessed, illegal immigrants and prostitutes as his ‘performers’. These performer’s were ‘paid’ , however, their ‘payment’ could be seen as being ‘equivalent’ to their ‘life story’, for example, ‘In 2000 he hired a tattooist to tattoo a continuous thin line across the backs of four drug-addicted prostitutes in return for the price of one hit of heroin.
160 cm Line Tattooed on 4 People El Gallo Arte Contemporáneo. Salamanca, Spain. December 2000
Sierra’s events test individual and social boundaries to expose social and cultural inequalities1
In 2010 Santiago produced a piece for John Kaldor’s Project 22, titled
7 forms measuring 600 x 60 x 60 cm constructed to be held horizontal to a wall, in which he unifies ‘sculpture and performance to create a physical portrait of the labor economy. Hired for the minimum wage, the employees hold monolithic structures on their shoulders for the duration of a working day. They recall the caryatid or atlas figures whose sculpted forms stand as pillars to support the weight of classical architecture. Carrying casket-like forms on their shoulders, they represent what Sierra calls the ‘social burial’ of labor..... Sierra stipulated that they must be paid the minimum wage and be genuinely in need of work.’2
Santiago Sierra’s performances are remarkably confronting and thought provoking due to reality of the ‘performers’ lives and the public nature of these works.
1. http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/project-archive/santiago-sierra-2010
2. http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/project-archive/santiago-sierra-2010
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