Dark Mofo: Santiago Sierra waves the red flag at colonialism
Hobart Winter arts festival Dark Mofo is preparing for its next controversy — raising a blood-soaked flag by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra.
Dark Mofo does a good line in provocation. In 2017 the popular midwinter arts festival run by Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) caused outrage when a bull was slaughtered, its meat, blood and entrails later forming part of a performance by Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch in a comment on war and suffering. The following year social media was again abuzz when Australian performance artist Mike Parr was entombed underneath a busy Hobart street for three days, a memorial in part to “the genocidal violence of nineteenth-century British colonialism in Australia”. No doubt this year’s festival will again spark controversy, with the announcement that one of the major works, Spanish artist Santiago Sierra’s Union Flag, will see the donated blood of 83 First Nations people pooled in a metal bucket into which the flag of the Union Jack will be immersed. The blood-soaked flag will then be displayed for the duration of the June festival.
Sierra has released an Australia-wide letter calling for “the collaboration of First Nations people from countries that were colonised by the British Empire”, with the offer to fly to Hobart from anywhere in Australia one randomly selected participant from each colonised country – for example, New Zealand, Fiji or Canada – and for that person to then donate a small amount of blood at a Hobart medical facility. “The First Nations people of Australia suffered enormously and brutally from British colonialism,” Sierra writes. “The intent of this project is against colonialism and a denouncement of the pain and destruction it has caused the First Nations people, devastating entire cultures and civilisations.”
Dark Mofo’s creative director Leigh Carmichael has been aware of Sierra’s work since MONA acquired his work Economical Study on the Skin of Caracans, a series of black and white photographs of people’s backs with their annual salary placed opposite, noting the darker the skin colour the less they earned. “It’s quite moving. It’s been on display most of the time we’ve been open so I’ve been aware of him for some time. That work has always left a mark on me,” Carmichael says.
A contemporary performance and installation artist, Sierra has a long, respected and – yes, provocative – history. Since the early 1990s he has been driven to expose the social, economic and political inequality he observes in day-to-day life. His body of work is wildly diverse, deliberately challenging and often deeply uncomfortable.
Take 160cm Line Tattooed on 4 People, a video work displayed by London’s Tate Modern in which Sierra invited four heroin-addicted prostitutes to have their backs tattooed in exchange for a shot of heroin. In an interview with The Tate, Sierra noted that “normally they charge 2000-3000 pesetas for fellatio, while the price of a shot of heroin is around 12,000 pesetas … people need money, people have to work, and I’m looking for strong images to express this.” In the video the women are seen laughing, smoking and casually observing one another’s backs as they’re tattooed.
A 2001 show at Berlin’s Kunst-Werke consisted of six large cardboard boxes inside which were concealed a handful of asylum seekers Sierra had paid to sit silently for four hours a day. With each muffled cough and shuffle coming from the boxes, viewers were made conscious of the oppressive surrounds experienced by the participants.
Speaking through a translator from his home in Madrid, Sierra says he finds art a powerful and effective medium to generate debate about urgent issues. “The most interesting topics are those that are controversial, simply because they make a point on which not everyone agrees,” he says. “From my point of view (my art addresses) everyday themes. I’ve never seen anyone in a gallery who felt provoked or made a bad face. I think it’s something that happens outside the art room and mainly by the media whose intention is to prevent certain things being talked about.”
Sierra is no stranger to Australia. He has exhibited twice with Kaldor Public Art Projects, firstly at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane in 2010 with the installation 7 Forms Measuring 600 x 60 x 60cm, Constructed to be Held Horizontal to a Wall in which a number of paid workers stood silently supporting large sculptural forms on their shoulders for the duration of the working day, a physical portrait of the labour economy. In 2013 he was invited to be part of Kaldor’s 13 Rooms, a living sculpture exhibition in Sydney, alongside renowned artists including Marina Abramovic, John Baldessari and Damien Hirst. His work, an extension of his existing Veterans of War, saw visitors enter a white cube to find a middle-aged Australian veteran of the Iraq or Afghanistan war standing quietly in the corner with their back to the viewer. Sierra’s 2012 work Destroyed Word, which opened the Melbourne Festival, saw a 3.5m letter “K” constructed using natural materials set alight and burnt to ashes. The presentation was the culmination of a two-year project in which Sierra travelled to different countries overseeing the destruction of different letters, placing the final letter “K” in Melbourne to reveal the word “KAPITALISM”.
The imagery and messaging are not subtle, and Sierra welcomes all reactions. “A few years ago I presented a work about contemporary political prisoners in the Spanish state that was censored at the ARCO art fair in Madrid. They made the gallerist withdraw the piece because His Majesty the King of Spain was attending and might find it hurtful to see those themes,” he says. “If there’s something that makes me quite proud it’s that precisely because of the censorship the subject starts to be heard everywhere. I do believe that’s brought some change, at least in perspective.”
For Dark Mofo he has set his sights on the ongoing destructive effects of colonialism on First Nations people, in this case by the British in Australia, although he says Britain is interchangeable with any number of conquering nations. “The French, Portuguese, Spanish … many others could be the object of similar actions, because the idea that I condemn is not British nationalism in particular but imperialism on a global level,” Sierra says. “I think it makes sense to start with the British flag because it has been one of the greatest and most destructive empires in history.”
Although Sierra says he plans to “engage with and represent the national identities” of First Nations people once he arrives in Hobart he will not be directly collaborating with First Nations Australians. Carmichael supports Sierra’s decision. “He’s been very clear from the beginning he’d like to work with First Nations people and the local Aboriginal community and understand their point of view, but not collaborate on the project,” he says. “He’s the artist, it’s his art (and) I don’t believe he feels he needs to seek approval from anyone to make statements about ideas and themes he has an interest in as an artist. I align with him on that.”
On the question of why a Spaniard would create a work around the history and repercussions of colonisation on Indigenous Australians, Sierra says the project speaks to an issue of humanity. “This project does not consider (one) specific historical event, it is a global project that encompasses many, many countries and therefore considers the local as part of a ruse that bloodies entire countries in favour of colonialism … it’s a matter of humanity and therefore it concerns me.”
Carmichael says the proposal to use the Union Flag caused deep division within Dark Mofo’s curatorial team. It was first mooted by the festival’s international curator Olivier Varenne, the man behind the programming of Nitsch in 2017 and the wildly popular Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda at Dark Mofo’s debut festival in 2013. Varenne visited Sierra in his Madrid studio in 2018 and invited him to submit ideas, which resulted in the commissioning of Union Flag. Originally scheduled for the 2020 festival but postponed due to COVID, Union Flag has continued to be hotly debated.
“We’ve been debating and arguing about it for a year now and there are some really strong views within my team that we shouldn’t be proceeding,” Carmichael says. “It’s a work that could be seen as difficult from the left and the right so we find ourselves in the middle – which is a really good place for a festival to be … it was the same with Hermann Nitsch and other works we’ve had. I feel it’s good art when it’s difficult.”
This year’s Dark Mofo will be a shorter, pared-back affair. “We need to make this festival of a scale that if we have to cancel in the last few weeks it won’t wipe out David,” Carmichael says of Dark Mofo’s founder David Walsh, who, along with government funding, box office and bar takings, is responsible for a large portion of the festival’s budget. Significantly, the festival team has this year decided to eschew sponsorship. “It’s something that’s been bothering me for a few years. We really appreciate their support but did notice sponsorship activations were having a pretty big impact on the festival experience and not necessarily for the better.”
Carmichael says this year’s festival will be reduced from the $5-6 million budget of previous years to $1-2 million. “This was never a commercial venture. We want to just focus on our cultural agenda.”
Although Dark Mofo’s music program has been reduced because of COVID restrictions, there is still a healthy budget to spend on the visual arts, and that includes paying for flights, accommodation and a stipend for volunteer First Nations blood donors — providing the law permits it. The team is currently seeking legal advice and there is the possibility Union Flag may be withheld until 2022.
“Paying people to donate their blood may form part of the (creative) discussion,” Carmichael says. “The concept of exploitation is one Santiago has flirted with his entire career. We wouldn’t expect people to take two days out of their lives and not be compensated but it really depends on what the law allows.”
Aware of the controversy Union Flagis likely to ignite, Carmichael hopes a discussion around meaningful change will win out. “Change is slow. It is happening, there’s more and more recognition and discussion of our past, and hopefully Union Flag will become part of that narrative.”
Dark Mofo runs in Hobart from June 16-22