Santiago Sierra
Santiago Sierra (born 1966 in Madrid ) is a Spanish conceptual artist.
Life and work
Sierra studied art in Madrid, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg (1989-1991) at BJ Flower and in Mexico City, where he has lived since 1995.
He has repeatedly met with his socio-critical projects for attention. He often thematized this poverty and wages, but also the established art scene. If there are viewer and art work in art traditionally in the position of subject ( art viewer ) and object (factory ), so this relationship is precarious in Sierras actions - if not canceled. His practice integrates the viewer into the work and it is is usually only by the audience, their reaction and imagination to artistic practice.
Sierra documented the often conceived by him actions photographically or with video.
Works from 1998 to 2005
Sierra was blocking an intersection in Mexico City in 1998 and so paralyzed the traffic.
Also he let men masturbate against payment; tattooed in 1999 at a small wage six young Cubans a line on the back. In another action workers persevered against payment under cardboard boxes.
At the opening of the Biennale in Venice in 2001, he dyed his hair blond 133 immigrants and paid them each 60 dollars for it. You should apply, as Europeans. Videos of the action set from Sierra.
On the Spanish side of the Strait of Gibraltar he paid in 2002 selected immigrants from Africa for the excavation of burrows.
Also in 2003, Sierra had walled up the Pavilion of Spain at the Venice Biennale and guard. The empty buildings could be entered only upon presentation of a Spanish passport. So the globalized world and dealing with migration was unmasked impressive.
In 2005, Sierra and once again stir when he filled a room in the Hanoverian Kestnergesellschaft with mud. The visitors were provided rubber boots, with which they were allowed to wade about in the installation. The project house in the mud should remember the job creation scheme for recruitment of the Maschsee in the 1930s through about 1650 unemployed Hanoverian. Contrary to initial installation considerations neither so -called one - euro - workers ( work opportunities with additional expense allowance ) were still used original mud from the Maschsee in Sierras. First prevented provisions of the Federal Employment Agency, a second bacterial load of Maschsee sludge.
Projects for the German past
245 cubic meters and The Punished ( The chastened ) (2006 )
In the synagogue in Stommeln at Cologne he headed in 2006 as part of the project, 245 cubic meters of the waste gases of six cars and made them that way to a gas chamber. Visitors were able to commit the area with a respirator and accompanied by a firefighter individually. The aim was to address the trivialization of Holocaust remembrance and to address " the chronic and instrumentalized guilt ". The Central Council of Jews in Germany criticized the action sharp as " mediocre " and " insult to the victims ." In the synagogue, you find yourself alone, observed only by a firefighter in background. Your own breath sounds and the Firefighter's is heard and the view from the mask falls to the room with the six tubes, through which the toxic carbon monoxide is passed into the synagogue. After massive protests, the action has now been stopped by the city Pulheim now. The artist has announced deal in a discussion with the critics.
Reactions to the project 245 cubic meters
Daniel Kothenschulte FR:
" Now, if car exhaust gases are directed into the Stommelner synagogue, that does not mean that an absurd experience to be simulated here. It's about a place to make impassable because you have temporarily rented it to the death. "
Wenke Husmann ( The Time):
" There is no shame to operate as an artist self-marketing. But you can gain the impression that going to be a bad taste on the justification that it rubs against the remembrance of the Holocaust. "
Christoph Schlingensief in an interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger:
"You can not call it art. A work of art must be able to speak, this work is already silenced in itself. Even an old, rabbit provocation ' as mine is too flat. This action trivializes the actions that Sierra has done before. It is trite, just next to it, stupid. He should put his car in front of the Reichstag and pure direct the gas there. The politicians could then be indignant in gas masks. Let's see what was going on then. The action in the former synagogue of Stommeln is too close. "
The Punished
Only shortly after the start of the " gas chamber project" in Pulheim near Cologne began at the art fair " Fine Art Fair Frankfurt " the project "The Punished ". Again, Sierra expose with the German responsibility for the Holocaust. Arise on ten different locations in Frankfurt older persons against payment of 15 to 19 of March 2006 for four hours each symbolically in the corner ( out of shame ).
Exhibitions
- 2013: Santiago Sierra: sculpture, photography, film, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.
Prices
2010 should receive the Spanish National Prize Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas de España Santiago Sierra. However, he refused, endowed with 30,000 Euro prize, including with the words "This award exploited the prestige of the award-winners in favor of the state. " Another artist over, he expressed that he was living from his work, and not from leaking the eggs the powerful.