Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

50 kg. de yeso [50 Kg of Plaster in the Street]

Image caption
SANTIAGO SIERRA

50 kg. de yeso [50 Kg of Plaster in the Street]

  • 1994
  • Silver gel print on baryta paper
  • 226 x 150 cm
  • Cat. F_58
  • Acquired in 2002
By:
Isabel Tejeda

In December 1994, when Santiago Sierra was just starting his career, he staged an intervention on Calle Marqués de Corbera in Madrid which had two outcomes: one was a performance piece that required the involuntary contributions of passers-by to work; the other was a photographic version of the event. This is a common way of working for Sierra: a black and white photograph that acts as an autonomous work and as a document capturing one of the final moments of the action.

50 Kg of Plaster in the Street (1994) highlighted the boom in purely speculative construction that Madrid was undergoing at that time. The initial outcome was the building of many more new dwellings than the increase in population called for. A forest of cranes rose up over Spanish cities, and there were patches of sand and plaster at street level not only at the exits of the work sites but also trodden along the roadways. He called attention to this situation, which had become commonplace, with an event that made it even more visible by emptying up to 50 kilos of sacks of plaster in the street; He hoped that passing cars would create a white drawing from one side to another as they drove by. The property bubble eventually burst a decade later and the piece is therefore visionary from a current re-reading.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Santiago Sierra
Madrid 1966

Santiago Sierra studied at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid in the 1980s. In the early 1990s he produced pieces with conceptual and minimalist influences, such as Cubic Container Measuring 300 x 300 cm (1990), Cement Wall Measuring 300 x 300 cm and Facing Upwards (1992) and 30 Loaves of Bread Lined Up (1996), while furthering his studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (1990 and 1991). His walks through Hamburg were reminiscent of those of Robert Smithson in Passaic. He was already building what would become a general trait in his output: purely descriptive titles and the parallel use of documentation, in the form of a video or photograph, to record the event. In 1996 he moved to Mexico City and took part in the Havana Biennial two years later with a piece that pointed the way to his future path: Person Paid to Have 30 cm Line Tattooed on Them. At that event he began to highlight the structures of power underpinning economic and social exchanges. Sierra criticises the exploitation of economically disadvantaged people who are forced into accepting humiliating, hazardous or apparently pointless jobs. He coldly brings their situations to light physically: he engraves their exploitation on the bodies of the workers, often leaving marks as a result of having rented space on their bodies. One of his best works was his intervention in the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2003), where he denied access to the complex – which by the way was empty – to anybody who could not produce an official document to prove they held Spanish citizenship. He thus highlighted the lability of the concept of frontiers and discredited the privileges of nationality. In that case, the members of the public, both those left outside and those who managed to enter, were the art piece.

He has held solo shows at various museums and art centres including at the Carrillo Gil Museum (Mexico City, 1996); the Malaga Contemporary Art Centre (2006); the Tate Modern (London, 2008); the Contemporary Art Museum (Vigo, 2009); the Reykjavik Art Museum (Reykjavik, 2012); and the Kunsthalle Tübingen (Tübingen, Germany, 2013). He has taken part in the Havana Biennial (1998) and the Istanbul Biennial (2013). In 2010 he refused the National Award for Plastic Arts.

Isabel Tejeda

 
 
Fabio Cavallucci & Carlos Jiménez Santiago Sierra, Trento, Silvana, 2005. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.