THE MAELSTRÖM
Santiago Sierra, 2023, 34’
Europe is a garden and the rest of the world is a jungle. This is the central idea, taken from an extract of a speech by Josep Borrell –EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy– which is repeated ad nauseam during the 34′ duration of the work. Against a wall or on the floor, a group of young Gambians, members of the local football team Tallinding United, repeat police arrest positions one after the other, as if it were a yoga exercise manual.
Santiago Sierra was born in Madrid (Spain) in 1966, where he still lives and works. After graduating in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, Santiago Sierra completed his artistic training in Hamburg, where he studied under professors F. E. Walter, S. Brown and B. J. Blume. Sierra’s work seeks to reveal the perverse networks of power that inspire the alienation and exploitation of workers, the injustice of labor relations, the unequal distribution of wealth produced by capitalism, the deviance of work and money, racial discrimination in a world marked by unidirectional migratory flows (south-north).