Santiago Sierra

Santiago Sierra, born 1966 in Madrid, Spain, is an artist and director. Over the past twenty years, he has exhibited widely in Europe and the Americas, and has been the subject of numerous solo presentations in museums and galleries, including London's Tate Modern; Mexico's Museo Rufino Tamayo; Konsthallen in Stockholm; Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover; Kunsthaus Bergenz in Austria; and at Kunst Werke in Berlin. He represented Spain at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.His work reflects his views on capitalism, labor, and exploitation. Sierra's works exhibits for example a paid group of workers moving a heavy rock from a point A to a point B and vice versa. He caused controversy by covering ten Iraqi immigrants in insulating polyurethane foam and waiting for it to harden. Another of his well known projects is a room of mud in Hanover, Germany, commemorating the job-creation measure origin of the Maschsee. In 2006, he provoked controversy with his installation "245 cubic meters", a gas chamber created inside a former synagogue in Pulheim, Germany. Most of Santiago Sierra's projects have been recorded on film.