Agnieszka

Szymaska
Department of Sociology
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan
agnieszka_szymanska@vp.pl


Holding a mirror to society.
Works by Santiago Sierra as a voice against racism.


The relation between art and politics has always been very close. Artists treat social,
economic and political matters as parts of a catalogue of topics to create art works and take
part in the discussion on vital global issues.

In my paper I would like to present an artist who is socially engaged and whose works refer
to a very important social issue the exploitation of workers and cheap labour force.
Santiago Sierra, born in 1966 in Madrid, the best known contemporary Spanish artist, lives
and works in Mexico City. He is a performer and also creates installations. He made minimal
and conceptual art. Most of his exhibitions took place in Spain, Germany, the United States
and the United Kingdom. As I have already mentioned earlier, the main topics of his works
include criticism of capitalism, underpaid labourers completing menial tasks and
immigration. Sierra is said to be a very controversial artist not merely because of the topics
he tends to choose, but also because of his methods. He works with prostitutes, illegal
immigrant and workers, he has tattooed people, he has told them to sit in cardboard boxes
or dyed their hair, paying them minimal wages. It is said that he got involved in socially
engaged art when he realised how little money Mexican workers got for performing gruelling
work.1 His social background has also had a profound influence on his work as he comes
from a working-class family.

Class racism capitalism

For many reasons Santiago Sierras works can be understood as a statement about (or rather
against) racism. As we consider racism as an invention of modernism, we can also see the
direct link between racism and capitalism, cheap labour force and illegal immigrants. We can
also easily match those factors: being subjected by racism is often connected with being an
illegal immigrant who delivers low paid menial work. Furthermore, as we can learn from Loic
Wacquant, racism has always been a convenient excuse to justify exploitation of some

1
http://www.artfacts.net/en/artist/santiago-sierra-9963/profile.html

1
groups of people.2 Almost every economic system needs some resources to exploit to exist.
Especially capitalism. In capitalism racism (as well as sexism) has its economic function: it
lowers the costs of production. Illegal immigrants also have similar functions. They are
necessary in the system because capitalism still needs people to complete menial tasks for
small salaries. Employing illegal immigrants for lower wages may be justified by racist
discourse they are not us, they are foreigners, they are not equal to us.

We can call this phenomenon cultural racism (as opposed to ethnical racism). Cultural racism
is about the essentialism and naturalism of some cultural features drawn to certain groups or
classes. It is a discursive procedure but with the real effect on power relations.3 Cultural
racism legitimizes social inequalities and exploitation, showing that they result from natural
differences between classes.4 Class (or caste) racism was present in the discourse when
aristocracy in Europe felt endangered by the process of creating nations. The same type of
discourse could be found in America when it justified slavery. The discourse emphasised that
black people were inferior to white people because they were made to work physically, being
servants and they were unable to develop a civilization. Thus economic exploitation precedes
racism discourse.5

New forms of racism are also said to be effects of egalitarianism, universalism and belief in
equal opportunities. Olivier C. Cox6 and Immanuel Wallerstein7 connect modern racism with
capitalism. Wallerstein claims that the relation between racism and capitalism is paradoxical.
Capitalism needs to develop an idea of universalism and egalitarianism ideas of equal
opportunity for everyone. However, those ideas enhance requirements of justice, systematic
changes and social unrest, which is a danger of accumulating capital.8 The best solution for
that is racism (and sexism), which stabilizes the hierarchy and maintains status quo. Still,
racism is the opposite of universalism. The function of racism in capitalism is not the
exclusion of some groups from the system, but the inclusion of these and lowering the costs
of their work. Racism is more efficient than meritocracy because it provides political stability,
which is essential for capitalism to expand. The rhetoric of racism is essential, but the choice
of the group which will be degraded depends on the social and economic circumstances.


2
L. Wacquant, From Slavery to Mass Incarceration. Rethinking the Race Question in the USA, New Left Review,
13 Jan/Feb 2002.
3
See: M. Bobako, Konstruowanie odmiennoci klasowej jako urasawianie. Przypadek polski po 1989 roku, in:
P. Zuk (ed.) Podziay klasowe i nierwnoci spoeczne. Refleksje socjologiczne po dwch dekadach realnego
kapitalizmu w Polsce, Oficyna Naukowa, Warszawa 2010.
4
E. Balibar, Class racism, in: E. Balibar, I. Wallerstein (ed.) Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities, Verso,
LondonNew York 1991.
5
L. Wacquant, op. cit.
6
O. C. Cox, Race Relations, in: L. Back, J. Solomos (ed.), Theories of Race and Racism. A reader, Routledge,
LondonNew York 2000.
7
I. Wallerstein, The Ideological Tensions of Capitalism. Universalism versus Racism and Sexism, in: E. Balibar, I.
Wallerstein (ed.), op. cit.
8
M. Bobako, op. cit.

2
Racism discourse works similarly to Pierre Bourdiues doxa, which is a set of beliefs and rules
taken for granted in a particular field (self-evident givens). Each agent tacitly accords by the
mere fact of acting in accord with social convention, is itself a fundamental objective at stake
in that form of class struggle which is the struggle for the imposition of the dominant systems
of classification.9 Those beliefs are created in discourse by dominant classes (who possess
symbolic capital) and express their interests. The main problem with doxa (as well as with
racism) is that all society, also those subjected by it, take it as a normal situation (eg. the
poor believe they are poor because it is their fault, slaves believe they are unable to create
their own society), which prevent them to oppose the existing order.

Racism as a form of discrimination or oppression which facilitates high levels of exploitation,
and has thus been an important factor in the development of capitalism. First, it allows
capitalists to secure sources of cheap, unorganized, and highly exploitable labour. Prominent
examples are immigrants and minorities. Secondly, racism allows the capitalist ruling class to
divide and rule the exploited classes. Workers are told to blame and hate other workers -
distinguished by culture, language, skin colour, or some other arbitrary feature - for their
misery. A classic example is the scapegoating of immigrants and refugees for taking away
jobs and housing.10 Racist attitudes make it very difficult to unite workers against the
capitalism to challenge the overall distribution of wealth and power in society. Racism has
been used again and again to break workers' struggles.

Racial stigma and class hatred are combined today in the category of immigration.11 Splitting
humanity into super-humanity and sub-humanity has class (or caste) signification (not
ethnical). Racist representations of history stand in relation to the class struggle.12 Firstly it
was aristocratic racism in the era of colonialism. Then, the industrial revolution created
specifically capitalist relations of production and started new racism of the bourgeois era. We
can also notice the phantasmatic equation of labouring classes with dangerous classes,13 the
fusion of a socioeconomic category with an anthropological and moral category. Images of
the race of labourers are condensed in a single discourse of poverty, criminality, physical and
moral defects and dirtiness.

Global economy and New Slavery

One of the biggest changes in the global economy was the shift from Fordism model of
production, based on the assembly line to post-Fordism model based on the informatization
and computerization of labour and instability of employment. Today, multinational

9
P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977.
10
http://nefac.net/node/114
11
E. Blibar, op. cit., p. 206.
12
Ibidem, p. 208.
13
bidem, p. 209.

3
companies are searching for cheap labour and moving their factories overseas to Third World
client regimes. They no longer need skilled workers, so they can undermine the foundation
of unions and neglect the issues of job security, rights, privileges, and protections to which
workers are entitled. The prevalence of the so-called precarious work has since been
formalized with the innovations of temporary work contracts and the internship economy.14
Moreover, the importance of immaterial and cognitive labour is growing and so is the
significance of the service industry.15 These developments have always been geographically
asymmetrical, to the extent that the informatization of production and dematerialization of
labour have predominantly occurred in the West. Social and economic practice resulting
from globalization, mass migration, human traffic and neo-liberal economy is called New
Slavery by some authors.16

Sierra makes art critical especially through focusing on the topic of global capitalism and New
Slavery. His works are different from the ones made by African-Diaspora-artists working on
Old Slavery in 90s in the United States and the United Kingdom such as Fred Wilson, Glenn
Ligon or Kara Walker.17 Despite the differences between them regarding both gender and
aesthetics, they all create work that can be called afterimages of slavery. Sierra makes
controversial pieces, objectifications of exploited bodies in global economy,18 in which he
hires itinerant workers to enact menial tasks for minimal remuneration. He thus collapses the
distance between art and work, translating the aesthetic into a pure function of capitalist
instrumentality.19 He avoids any personal expression of empathy and is not interested in the
biography or emotions of the people he uses.

In 2000 Sierra presented his work entitled Workers Who Cannot Be Paid, Remunerated to
Remain inside Cardboard Boxes in Berlin. He employed six Chechen refugees to sit in
cardboard boxes for four hours a day over six weeks. However, being political exiles they
were not legally permitted to work in Germany, these individuals had to maintain anonymity
and be paid in secret as they would otherwise have risked deportation. Visitors cannot see
these refugees, nor do they have any proof of their existence. They must take the presence
of their bodies and their labour for granted.20 We experience similar situation outside the
museum or gallery, where we cannot see the people who make products we use on a daily
basis. The workers remain invisible; the value of particular things is not the result of the work
of one person who has been directly hired to do it, but of the work of someone, somewhere
else. By using abstraction, Sierra makes labourers' invisibility visible.

14
See: N. Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Knopf Canada, 1999.
15
E. Bacal, Art Work: Santiago Sierra and the Socio-Aesthetics of Production, Graduate Journal of Visual and
Material Culture, Issue 6/2013.
16
V. Schmidt-Linsenhoff, On and Beyond the Colour Line, in: B. Haehnel, M. Ulz (ed.), Slavery in Art and
Literature: Approaches to Trauma, Memory and Visuality, Fran & Timme GmbH, Berlin 2010, p.81.
17
V. Schmidt-Linsenhoff, op cit.
18
V. Schmidt-Linsenhoff, op. cit.
19
E. Bacal, op. cit.
20
E. Bacal, op. cit.

4
Sierra's performance made in Mexico in 2000, A person paid to clean visitors shoes without
their consent during opening served a similar purpose making invisible visible. This is how
the artist explains his work: In Mexico City subway system it is common to find young boys
and girls dragging themselves along the floor to clean other peoples footwear, without their
consent, in order to earn a tip. The search for a reward or compensation in the potential
clients compassion rather than the effectiveness and need to polish shoes. For this occasion,
a boy of about eleven years of age was taken to the opening of a photography exhibition
where he carried out his usual job.21 Sierra took the boy out of his natural environment
(underground station), where the kid is invisible a number of people pass him by every day
without noticing. But when the artist changes the context, to one in which no one will
expect the boy to appear, i.e. an art gallery, it evokes astonishment and indignation, but it
makes the boy visible. Sierra once said that: If you go to a coffee shop you dont think about
the guy picking the coffee beans, who might also be living in conditions of slavery.22 Sierra
doesnt create any worse reality in his works than the one that surrounds us. He just makes
us think about it.

Sierra also pays attention to other characteristics of work in the age of global economy:
doing meaningless tasks and job relations based only on money and physical exploitation. A
good example is the work 133 persons paid to have their hair dyed blonde, performed in Italy
in 2001 during the opening of the Venice Biennale. There are many illegal street vendors
in Venice, including immigrants from Senegal, Bangladesh or China, who were asked to have
their hair dyed blond for $60. The only preliminary criterion that they had to meet was to
have naturally dark hair. Many agreed. Sierra paid those workers for doing the meaningless
task dyeing their hair blonde. This work shows how people are able to exchange their time
and bodies for money in the capitalist system and how they submit to their economic
destiny. Sierra shows that the relationship between those people and their work is only
based on money. This topic is very popular in Sierras works, just to mention: 160 cm line
tattooed on four people, where he asks four prostitutes to agree to get tattooed for money or
Person remunerated for a period of 360 consecutive hours, where a man spends 360 hours
behind the wall.

Another example of his reflection about working conditions and a very interesting work is
The history of the Foksal Gallery taught to an unemployed Ukrainian, presented in Warsaw in
2002. The Foksal Gallery had four decades of history during which events, similar to those in
development of other countries during the same period of time, have taken place, coupled
with Polands own peculiar history, in which the country passed from a single party
dictatorship to a transition of national Catholics, into a parliamentary democracy. Four

21
http://www.santiago-sierra.com/20004_1024.php?key=68
22
http://www.marcspiegler.com/articles/artnews/artnews_profile_sierra_2003_06.pdf

5
specialists, one for each decade, were hired to explain those historic moments of the gallery
in four lessons 80 minutes each, to an unemployed worker in the street, and who was hired
for the occasion. The lesson was given in Polish, a language unknown to the unemployed
worker, for which a translator from Polish to Russian had been hired: a language which
although not his mother tongue, he nevertheless understood.23 That performance took
place in Warsaw at the Foksal Gallery one of the best known Polish contemporary art
galleries. This work is quite different from other Santiago Sierras works because it doesnt
directly show the physical exploitation of the worker. The unemployed Ukrainian got paid for
what he did. His task was to listen the history of the Foksal Gallery. He didnt have to do
meaningless tasks (as dyeing hair blond, making a tattoo or sitting in a cardboard box) or
work as he used to in his ordinary life. This task seemed to be more interesting and more
ambitious, but the knowledge he gained was completely useless for him. He spent six hours
getting bored.

Sustaining the social order

As I have mentioned before, racism has many functions in the modern world. Not only does
it lower the cost of labour force, but it also helps to sustain status quo and social order.
Sierra's works often show situations in which racism is used as a tool to keep some classes in
lower positions in the social hierarchy.

In 2002 Sierra performed a work entitled Hiring and arrangement of 30 workers in relation to
their skin colour. The Kunsthalle Wien contacted thirty workers people of various skin
colours from very light to very dark to be arranged side by side. As soon as a sufficient
number of people for the desired spectrum of shades arrived, they were ordered in their
underwear with their faces to the wall. We can interpret this realization by Santiago Sierra as
an example of intersectionality. It shows that race is not the only dimension of
discrimination. We also should take into account gender, class, religion, sexual orientation,
etc. Hiring and arrangement of 30 workers in relation to their skin colour is an example of
a similar situation of working class regardless of their skin colour and the class racism (not
ethnic). They all have low wages and are treated in an inhumane way: wear only underwear
and are facing the wall. However, the hierarchy of skin colours shows that white workers and
black workers may have different experiences of discrimination. On the one hand, they can
feel similar to each other, but on the other hand, their situations can be extremely different.
Interestingly enough, Kunstahelle Wien rejected previous Sierras idea of having the staff of
the Museum lined up in order of their salary. The result would create an array of skin tones
from lighter at the executive positions to darker in the more menial tasks.

Another example of class racism is the situation of the untouchables in India. Sierra
confronted that topic showing 21 Anthropometric Modules Made from Human Faeces by the

23
http://www.santiago-sierra.com/200203_1024.php?key=68

6
People of Sulabh International in India in 2005. The work is made of 21 modules of human
faeces, each measuring 215x75x20 cm. The faecal matter was collected in New Delhi and
Jaipur, after having rested for three years, which, from sanitary point of view, makes it
equivalent to earth. It was mixed with Fevicol, an agglutinative plastic, and dried in wooden
moulds. Workers of the sanitary movement Sulabh International of India are mostly
scavengers who, by birth, have to undertake the physically and psychological painful task of
collecting human faecal matter, being charged with the blames of previous life of bad
deeds.24 This art work, in quite a shocking way, draws our attention to the caste of
untouchables in India, whose work is cleaning the sanitary system. They are excluded from
society and treated as no-people or under-people. Their position in society is a result of the
birth in the caste which is traditionally considered worse than others. Although untouchables
are discriminated in society, they are necessary for the system to exist. In India there are
appalling sanitary conditions and lack of sanitary sewer, so the system needs the
untouchables as workers to do the kind of unpleasant work. We can also see similarities
between untouchables, illegal immigrants and Afro-Americans who are all discriminated, but,
at the same time, vital to the system. Their low and also tragic position is explained by
essentializing and naturalizing arguments such as the one that they were born worse, lack
certain features to change their situation and that their position is their own fault.

Sierra also makes an important statement about art he reduces art to a function of
capitalist alienation in which value is determined in relation to labour time. Here, as in a
factory, the workers disadvantageous submission of time and effort generates surplus value
and drives capital accumulation on the capitalist's part. For example, this disparity is directly
explained in his piece Person Saying a Phrase from 2002, a video in which the artist hires a
beggar to utter the following sentence in exchange for 5: My participation in this project
could generate 72,000 dollars profit. I am paid five pounds. With this kind of self-reflexivity
Sierra illustrates how the inherent inequality of the labour market acts as the institutional
and aesthetic condition of possibility for the artwork itself.25 The situation shown by Sierra is
not only typical for the art world but even more so for international corporations, which,
paying workers very low wages, fed on their work misfortunes, which can be viewed as
another way of sustaining social order.

Sierra as a socially engaged artist

Sierra uses violence as a tool of critique showing relations between the privileged and the
socially handicapped. He also uses all the means he possesses as a white, educated and
wealthy man to achieve his goals. He even tries to make critical and political art paying
attention to vital social issues. Yet he refuses to offer any alternatives to the troubling

24
http://www.santiago-sierra.com/200709_1024.php?key=68
25
E. Bacal, op. cit., p. 5.

7
questions he poses. There is still one question to answer: isnt he a participant in system of
economic exploitation?

This is what can we read at the website of Frieze Art Fairs about Santiago Sierras works:
Santiago Sierras work is basically based around human exploitation, and wouldnt exist
without it. Santiago Sierra is famous for his reproduction of the forms of exploitation that
underwrite the privileged lives of art audiences. This fact often leaves the latter with no
moral high ground from which to pass judgement on the artist or his work. How can you get
mad at Sierra for using the undocumented or indigent to hide inside crates on which you sit
at an art opening, or to work as human canvases onto which he tattoos lines or sprays toxic
foam, when you accept much more violent forms of exploitation every time you buy a cup of
coffee, drive to work or put your shoes on? The outrageousness of this work grows from the
banality of the crime at its core: the ideological submission of the consumer who implicitly
accepts the inevitability of these forms of inequity.26

Santiago Sierra's art works do not invite quiet and personal contemplation. On the contrary,
it leaves the viewer feeling used, guilty and full of rage. This is why Santiago Sierra is called
a socially engaged artist who tries to draw our attention to important issues in our societies.
There are of course people who say that it is good that artists are getting involved in social
problems mostly by using shock tactics and showing things about which we do not usually
think about while others say it is unacceptable that artists use inappropriate shock
techniques that can make many feel resentful.

Similar charges have been introduced against Santiago Sierra. Some really appreciate him for
what he does and consider his works really significant. Others say that he abuses the workers
he employs in the same way as their capitalist bosses or capitalist system do, which makes
him inhumane. Many dismiss his works as art.

The next question about engaged art refers to its ability to change the social reality. Doesnt
engaged art try to convince the convinced? We can say with a considerable probability that
people visiting galleries and museums to saw the Santiago Sierras works are familiar with
the problem of his art. However, Sierra said: Those ideas about art trying to push society into
making a change are very naive. That work really only involves the artists showing
themselves to be good-hearted for thinking about others. I know what I ama producer of
luxury objects.27 Some say that each voice against injustice, racism and exploitation of people
counts. But does the end justify the means? Shock tactics are the most effective in art unless
they are used for cheap publicity.

26
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/santiago_sierra1/
27
http://www.marcspiegler.com/articles/artnews/artnews_profile_sierra_2003_06.pdf

8

Moreover, using conceptual and minimal forms as well as abstraction in Sierra works doesnt
place his art in the mere exploitation context. Sierra abstracts the human subject to the
extent that he portrays the workers own reduction to an abstraction within society.28 He
creates new situations in which he opens new forms of dialogue and awakes critical
consciousness. While his art works may not change the system, or even try to, they present
a particularly convincing and moving picture of it.

Summary

It is said that critical art is knocking us out of automated modes of perception and thought.29
Critical art is about resisting the status quo, it is a way of expressing inequalities and injustice
of our societies in often shocking way. Many artists choose to made political and socio-
critical art. They channel the injustices and harsh realities of their daily lives or the lives of
those in need. Critical art (political or engaged art too) is the approach popular in the
modern art. Many critical artists were often taken as scandalous, because of the topics they
were interested in and the way they have expressed it. It is enough to mention David Cerny,
Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, Joseph Beuys or Polish critical artists in the 90s. Their works were
often a part of discussion on the vital social issues, some were censored or caused problems
to their creators. But artist mentioned above were controversial especially because of the
topics they have chosen, sometimes because of form of visual representation of it, but never
were accused of using other people. Santiago Sierra did. He is an uncompromising artist,
whose works are a drastic picture of our society. He also uses radical forms of expression,
hiring people to taking part in his performances. Santiago Sierras works refer to
immigration, cheap work force and critique of capitalism. His works focusing on class racism,
New Slavery and, as I also suggested, on links between capitalism, immigrants and cheap
labour force. Santiago Sierra is the best known living artist who is engaged in the above-
mentioned topics. His work remains an evocative and powerful critique of the capitalist
exploitation of the workers, immigration and inequalities.

Abstract

Race, immigration and work force are at the centre of social, political and economic issues of
the modern world. Those topics are also present in contemporary art. Santiago Sierra is one
of the best known critically engaged artists focusing on the topic of immigration, workers
exploitation and New Slavery. As there is a link between racism, exploitation and capitalism
Sierras works can be interpret in the new way as a statement against new forms of slavery.
Sierra is a radical artist using shocking technics: he paying people for taking part in his

28
E. Bacal, op. cit., p. 11.
29
http://culture.pl/en/article/critical-art-selected-issues

9
performances and doing menial tasks. But he also is able to pay our attention to vital social
issues and make invisible become visible. In this article I am showing a new interpretation of
his works regarding topics mentioned above.

Key words: Santiago Sierra, critical art, racism, immigration, New Slavery.

References

E. Bacal, Art Work: Santiago Sierra and the Socio-Aesthetics of Production, Graduate Journal
of Visual and Material Culture, Issue 6/2013.

E. Balibar, Class racism, in: E. Balibar, I. Wallerstein (ed.) Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous
Identities, Verso, London - New York 1991.

M. Bobako, Konstruowanie odmiennoci klasowej jako urasawianie. Przypadek polski po 1989
roku, in: P. Zuk (ed.) Podziay klasowe i nierwnoci spoeczne. Refleksje socjologiczne po
dwch dekadach realnego kapitalizmu w Polsce, Oficyna Naukowa, Warszawa 2010.

P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977.

O. C. Cox, Race Relations, in: L. Back, J. Solomos (ed.), Theories of Race and Racism. A reader,
Routledge, London - New York 2000.

N. Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Knopf Canada, 1999.

T. Margolles, S. Sierra, Santiago Sierra, BOMB, 86/2003.

V. Schmidt-Linsenhoff, On and Beyond the Colour Line, in: B. Haehnel, M. Ulz (ed.), Slavery in
Art and Literature: Approaches to Trauma, Memory and Visuality, Fran & Timme GmbH,
Berlin 2010.

I. Wallerstein, The Ideological Tensions of Capitalism. Universalism versus Racism and Sexism,
in: E. Balibar, I. Wallerstein (ed.), Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities, Verso, London -
New York 1991.

L. Wacquant, From Slavery to Mass Incarceration. Rethinking the Race Question in the USA,
New Left Review, 13 Jan/Feb 2002.

http://www.artfacts.net/en/artist/santiago-sierra-9963/profile.html

http://culture.pl/en/article/critical-art-selected-issues

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/santiago_sierra1/

http://nefac.net/node/114

10
http://www.santiago-sierra.com

http://www.marcspiegler.com/Articles/ArtNews/ArtNews_Profile_Sierra_2003_06.pdf

11