Visitors Casino

Alex Prager, La grande sortie, 2015

Santiago Sierra, Black flag (part 1 and 2), 2015

Presented as an immersive photography and sound installation, Black Flag records the process and performance of planting the universal symbol of the anarchist movement - the black flag - at the two most extreme points on Earth: the North and South Poles. In this gesture Sierra critiques the concept of territory and the practices of nationalism imbued in such acts; though this act of piracy, of anti-sovereignty, the artist subverts the conventions on which statehood constitutes.

On 14 April 2015, Santiago Sierra completed the first part of Black Flag at the geographic North Pole, latitude 90º N. The expedition travelled from the remote island Svalbard to the kinetic Russian ice base Barneo, using a network of private tourism and logistical support companies to complete the journey. From the base, several trips were undertaken to document the planting of the flag and the surrounding landscape. Eight months later, on 14 December 2015 – exactly 104 years after Roald Amundsen's successful Norwegian expedition to the South Pole and the tragedy of Robert Falcon Scott’s failed attempt – the final instalment of Black Flag was completed, using the more replete and permanent infrastructure of Antarctica. The flag was planted and documented at the geographic South Pole, latitude 90º S. The expeditions to both poles were documented with photographs and sound recordings. The flags were both left in situ.

“I wanted to create an anarchist icon that was a source of pride and courage; that made you think that the planet is ours when you saw it. I have created many works of a hurtful ugliness. However, I see Black Flag as the most poetic of my works, without a doubt the most beautiful of the ones I've done until now.” Santiago Sierra

(from http://www.a-political.org)

Santiago Sierra, Burial of ten workers, 2010

The place is referred as the north periphery of Livorno with a strictly portal-industrial character. This context has historical references to portal trade, slavery, maritime industry and immigration, but also to social movements like the foundation of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI). The workers, ten black men from Senegal, are strictly precarious workers enslaved by the merchandises of a faceless capitalism that they sell in the streets and beaches of Livorno: capitalism as supreme patron without a localized syndicate or working space-time. Santiago Sierra’s work paraphrases the monument raised in Livorno to honor Ferdinando I from the Medici Quatro Mori (The four Moors), where the aristocrat stands on top of the monuments base holding 4 enchained black men. For Sierra the martyred are 10 black Senegalese. In front of the sea looking towards the industrial area of Livorno and the sea, ten black men are paid to let their selves be buried gradually till the neck. Slaves of a volatilized patron set free by an absolute liberated hand-labor (more precisely an oral-labor due to the communicative approach to selling) that expands all over time and space. And it is precisely this overflow of capitalisms omnipresence that Santiago Sierra pulls down into a series of dual terms that articulate the conceptual and formal aspects of the artwork: capital-life, power-powerless, state-immigration, system- people, time-space, artwork-public, marginalized-the well- off, and so on. – © 2011, ProLitteris, Zurich

Santiago Sierra, 3000 holes of 180x50x50 cm each, 2002

The project completed at the NMAC Foundation in 2002 is based on these premises, where a group of immigrants of Maghribian and Sub-Saharan origin, contracted and insured for the occasion spent three weeks excavating 3000 hollows each of 180 x 70 x 70 cm in size, on a hill within the Montenmedio estate from where one can make out the African continent.  Later the artist took aerial photographs of the hollows and presented a 3 image edition and video which can be seen at the NMAC Foundation.

The 3000 aligned hollows occupy a surface area of 25,000m2 some two and a half hectares, on arid land.  The structuring of the hollows, their positioning and numbering is a minimalist concept and like other minimalist artists, through this project Santiago Sierra hopes to find a meaning to the social reality of many people who cannot find their place in a global world, in a world of borders, of “non-places” where economic partnerships prevail or personal relationships.

(from http://fundacionnmac.org)

Santiago Sierra, Submission (fomerly word of fire), 2006-07

In an empty an deserted piece of land in America were excavated each one of the letters that constitute the word SUMISION (submission). Those letters, Helvetica typography each one with a height of 15 meters, were excavated as cavities and its walls and soil were covered using concrete.

Anapra is an area in the most western part of Ciudad Juàrez, just a few metres from the U.S. border. It’s exactly the place where Americans intend to build a gigantic wall, very similar to the one erected in Berlin during the Cold War. The area in question constitutes the meeting place between the Mexican state of Chihuahua and the American states of New Mexico and Texas; it is the object of an urban-planning project for the construction of an international road junction leading into New Mexico. The city of El Paso and the Fort Bliss military base are located north of the border in Texas.

(from the exhibition’s notes)

Santiago Sierra, World’s Largest Graffiti, 2012

For the gigantic “slide” “World’s Largest Graffiti. Smara Refugee Camp, Algeria. October 2012” (measuring 240cm x 450cm) Santiago Sierra created not just the worlds largest graffiti but a highly visible call for help. For the past 30 years, 10,000’s of refugees from the Moroccan occupation have been living in the Smara Refugee Camp in Western Sahara in Algeria. Right by the gates of the camp Sierra engraved – with the help of a road grader – a 5 kilometer long 1.7 kilometer wide SOS into the desert sand. After all UN resolutions and rulings by international courts, siding with the refugees, have been ignored, Sierra made this call for help. Seeing no help coming from terrestrial powers he chose a dimension and perspective aimed at observers from a higher point of view. In case of this image it was in view of the Ikonos III Satellite.

(from http://www.artberlincontemporary.com)

Eduardo Paolozzi, Four Towers, 1962

Roy Lichtenstein, In the car, 1963

Duane Hanson, Tourists, 1970

Jean Dubuffet, Villa sur la route, 1957

Marino Marini, Pomona, 1949

Francis Bacon

on left - Figure study I, 1946

on right - Figure study II, 1945-6

William Turnbull, Sungazer, 1956

Jankel Adler, Hommage à Naum Gabo (Homage to Naum Gabo), 1946