SANTIAGO SIERRA - PABELLON DE ESPANA - 50A BIENAL DE VENECIA

SANTIAGO SIERRA - PABELLON DE ESPANA - 50A BIENAL DE VENECIA - (SPANISH PAVILION - 50TH VENICE BIENNALE)

Published by Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 2003

Turner/D.A.P.

Hardcover, 272 pages

28 x 22 cm

Language: English

Condition: Excellent

The Santiago Sierra – Pabellón de España catalog documents the artist's provocative intervention at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, where the Spanish Pavilion was accessible only to Spanish citizens upon presentation of an official national ID. Foreign visitors were denied entry, turning the exhibition space itself into a performance that exposed issues of nationalism, exclusion, and bureaucracy. On May 1st, an elderly woman, hooded in black, was paid to sit silently on a stool for an hour—one of many performances in which Sierra employed paid participants to embody the inequalities of global capitalism.
This volume compiles documentation and critical essays on this and other works from the previous decade, including Line of 30 cm Tattooed on a Remunerated Person (Mexico City, 1998), 8 People Paid to Remain Inside Cardboard Boxes(Guatemala City, 1999), and 3 People Paid to Lie Still Inside Boxes During a Party (Havana, 2000).
Featuring essays by Rosa Martínez and Cuauhtémoc Medina, with an introduction by Ana Palacio, the book serves as a critical examination of Sierra’s politically charged artistic practice, which consistently challenges structures of labor, power, and institutional complicity.