Robyn Walton 8993131

SANTIAGO SIERRA
Exploitation, Exclusion, and the ‘immiseration’ of Capitalism

Santiago Sierra once described himself as a “minimalist with a guilt

complex.” 1 This essay will explore how he addresses his socio-economic
concerns within his art practice.

A representative work from Sierra’s early career is ‘Container in Space,’

(1991), which is literally as described by the title.2 Sierra continues to use the
vocabulary of conceptual minimalism in his mature practice, but now he layers
his work with political and economic meaning. His sculptures are process
driven and therefore documentation of the work is essential – the site-specific
and performance works exist in the form of black and white photographs and
video.

A work that perhaps helped him move beyond his early formal simplicity was
‘20 Pieces of Road measuring 100x100cm pulled up from the floor,’ (1992).
Large segments of asphalt were cut and relocated into the gallery. It appears
that this project initiated Sierra’s interest in work (labour) as opposed to work
(art object). The relatively simple commercial transaction of engaging a road-

                                                                                                               
1  Schneider, 33
2  Refer to Appendix (with hard copy) for photographs of works discussed  

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working contractor became complex: “Certainly some workers refused to carry

out this task, which seemed meaningless to them, so that a number of teams
had to be employed in order to complete the work once it had started.” 3

n

From the late 1990’s Sierra began to explore the concept of exploitation
through work – specifically what economically disadvantaged people would do
in exchange for remuneration. Some of these projects were merely pointless
manual labour, but others involved the workers’ bodies (such as ‘Person paid
to have 30cm line tattooed on them,’ Mexico, 1998). Over the decade that
followed Sierra gradually ratcheted up the stakes from ‘Three people paid to
lay still inside three boxes during a party,’ (Cuba, 2000, while the guests at the
Havana Biennial unknowingly used them as bench seats), to ‘Ten people paid
to masturbate,’ (Cuba, 2000), leading finally to the apotheosis of this body of
work, which must be ‘Los Penetrados,’ (2008). Beyond which it is hard to go.

Sierra has been accused of exploiting his workers and enriching himself by
‘out-sourcing’ these performances to the desperate poor. Certainly he garners
many complaints from a shocked public, although not from his workers
themselves.4 Sierra’s justification for his transactions is reminiscent of a multi-
national corporation: “I simply follow the generally accepted rules of society. I
buy human beings and pay them the wages that are customary in their
respective countries.” 5 In a Marxian analysis the worker is reduced to a
machine producing a commodity – enslaved to capital.6

Sierra’s audience are made to question their own values and expectations
regarding this exchange between capital and labour, and therefore Sierra is
perhaps not an exploiter but an activist: exposing hypocrisy and unfairness
that already exist. “Only by penetrating the veils of illusion can (Marx) reveal
the exploitation by which capitalism lives.”7 Sierra’s work holds a mirror up to
social and economic reality. This view is supported by a project that reveals,
rather than perpetuates, exploitation. For ‘House in Mud,’ (Hanover, 2005)
Sierra installed mud in the ground floor galleries of the Kestnergesellschaft.
The project refers to the formation of the Maschsee in Hanover, an historic
National Socialist work scheme. Unemployed workers were paid pitiful wages
to dig an artificial pleasure lake by hand. The use of any machines was

                                                                                                               
3  Schneider, 27
4  Schneider, 30  
5  Wagner, 27  
6  Wheen, 15  
7  Wheen, 39  

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banned in order that more ‘work’ might be created.8 Sierra himself has said,
“It’s possible to have dignity in society, but it costs money.”9

n

Running parallel to Sierra’s exploitation works are several that address the
issue of exclusion. For ‘Workers who cannot be paid, remunerated to remain
inside cardboard boxes,’ (Kunst-Werke, Berlin, 2000) Sierra engaged six
Chechen political asylum seekers to sit concealed in the gallery. “By hiding
the ‘illegal’ workers, Sierra underscored their condition as marginalized,
secluded and economically disadvantaged.” 10 Here Sierra’s audience must
confront those who are excluded from society.

For Lisson Gallery’s new space Sierra installed ‘Space Closed by Corrugated
Metal’, (London, 2002). The façade, and access into the gallery, was
completely blocked off by a wall of corrugated iron, which exasperated visitors
on opening night.11 As Sierra says, “It has to do with impeding access… The
art spectator can access any site. He lives in a privileged world.”12 Being
denied entry is a new experience for some and Sierra forces them to
empathise with the disadvantaged.

Similarly with Sierra’s installation at the 2003 Venice Biennale, ‘Wall enclosing
a space,’ the main entrance to the Spanish pavilion was blocked off with a
brick wall. At the back entrance only those holding a Spanish passport were
allowed to enter, upon which they found only a few remnants from a previous
installation. Sierra highlighted the issue of border control, and simultaneously
the concept of ‘the nation’, and the structure of the Venice Biennale itself. He
stated that: “The piece was not the empty space but rather the situation.”13

Sierra is a Spanish artist but he currently lives in Mexico City. Mexico’s border
relationship with the United States has obviously been an influence upon
Sierra’s exclusion politics. In addition Sierra is acutely aware of the Mexican
socio-economic extremes and disenfranchisement of the poor. Sierra said,
“Mexico is… a miniature planet Earth. You can pass from Ethiopia to
Switzerland in a second by taking the bus.”14

n
                                                                                                               
8  Wagner, 22  
9  Margolles, 65  
10  Montenegro, 105  
11  Margolles, 63
12  Margolles, 69  
13  Margolles, 64  
14  Margolles, 69  

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With regards to socio-economic extremes, one of Karl Marx’s theories in Das

Kapital was that of immiseration: the ‘immiseration thesis’ states that within
the capitalist system, it is inevitable that real wages and working conditions
will decline for those at the bottom of the pile.15 Critics claim that as living
conditions have risen for everyone this theory must be false, however Marx’s
key point was about the relative difference between rich and poor, which is
ever widening.

Recently Sierra began to address the worsening conditions for the under-
employed in the face of the ‘credit crunch.’ Profit has been privatized, while
debt has become a public burden. The worker is increasingly subordinate to
the excessive power of financial capital, with wage repression leading to
obscene inequality. 16 As Marx said, “Wages are determined by the fierce
struggle between capitalist and worker. The capitalist inevitably wins. The
capitalist can live longer without the worker than the worker can without
him.”17

Sierra designed ‘NO, global tour’ (2009) to apply to multiple situations, “with a
spirit more akin to Zeitgeist than to genius loci.”18 The project involved taking
a monumental NO on a tour targeting industrial, financial, and commercial
locations worldwide. In 2011 the “epic road movie” was released.19 In the era
of the Global Financial Crisis ‘NO’ resonates with audiences around the world
like some kind of primal scream therapy, however Squibb’s cynical view is of
the successful global artist cashing in: “The NO should be seen for what it is:

                                                                                                               
15  “Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of

labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the
development of production transform themselves into means of domination over,
and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a
man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every
remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him
the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as
science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions
under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the
more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and
drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all
methods for the production of surplus value are at the same time methods of
accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for
the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital
accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow
worse.” Marx, Das Kapital, Vol.1, ch.25, p.445
16  Harvey  
17  Wheen, 14  
18  noglobaltour  
19  noglobaltour  

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an attempt by an exhausted performer to hone his shtick to the point where he

can simply take it on the road; hence the film.”20

With ‘Burned Word’ in 2012, Sierra appears to specifically target the policies
of the Spanish government. The letters FUTURE were positioned in front of
apartments in Valencia, and then destroyed by flames. Spain is currently
suffering from extremely high unemployment and imposed austerity, and
Sierra seems to be accusing the government of destroying the future of the
Spanish people. However, the work also carries the universal global message
of the crisis: financial traders and big banks destroying our future. Perhaps
this was Sierra’s intent given that he used the English spelling ‘future’ and not
the Spanish ‘futuro.’

Another project in this body of work is ‘Destroyed Word,’ (10 individual

performances 2012, film completed 2013). The letters that form KAPITALISM
have been individually constructed in different countries out of materials that
represent the economies of the host country. Sierra outsourced the second A
to Te Tuhi who organised the production of a ‘milk bottle’ A, and its
destruction with gunfire. The final work shows the people of the world uniting
to dismantle ‘capitalism,’ while simultaneously being used by the structure of
capitalism to do so. Outsourced labourers are being paid to make it, and to
break it.

Interestingly Sierra has not chosen the English word ‘capitalism’, or even the
Spanish version ‘capitalismo,’ but rather the German translation. This seems
to be a work aimed at the powerful German lobby within the European Union,
or perhaps referring directly to Marx’s Das Kapital.

In summary, Sierra’s practice seems to revolve around forcing the privileged

art world to become more aware of the underdog – those who have been
downtrodden, exploited, excluded and immiserated by the capitalist system. It
appears that Sierra’s art works are posing the same question Harvey puts into
words: “Is it time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that
would allow us to live within a system that could be responsible, just and
humane?”21

                                                                                                               
20  Squibb  
21  Harvey  

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Baum, Kelly, ‘Santiago Sierra: how to do things with words,’ p6, Art Journal 69.4
(winter 2010)

Bishop, Claire, ‘The social turn: collaboration and its discontents,’ p178, Artforum
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Chen, Anelise, ‘Submission, Labor, Identity: The Negotiations of Santiago Sierra,’

14/10/2010, Hydra Magazine, www.hydramag.com (accessed 23/4/2013)

Ciudad Futura, ‘Santiago Sierra Says No,’ (‘Se puede decir más alto pero no más
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23/4/2013)

Harvey, David, ‘The Crises of Capitalism’, address to Royal Society for the
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Margolles, Teresa, (in conversation with) ‘Santiago Sierra,’ pp62-69, in BOMB 86,
Winter 2003/2004

Marx, ‘Das Kapital: A critique of Political Economy’, Volume 1, (accessed 25/5/2013),

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Millar, John Douglas, ‘Conceptual Writing,’ p10, in Art Monthly 361 (Nov 2012)

Minder, Raphael, ‘Some Spanish Artists Facing Creative Dilemma During Economic
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Montenegro Rosero, Andrés David, ‘Locating work in Santiago Sierra’s artistic

practice,’ pp99-115, ‘Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization,’
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