8 PEOPLE PAID TO REMAIN INSIDE CARDBOARD BOXES, 1999

G & T building. Guatemala City, 1999

On the top floor of a semi-occupied office building, situated in the industrial zone of Guatemala City, eight boxes of residual cardboard were made and installed, separated from each other at equal distances. Eight chairs were placed next to these boxes.

A public offer for work was then made, asking for people willing to remain seated inside the boxes for four hours, receiving 100 quetyals, about $9. After receiving a considerable response from the workers, they werer placed in the boxes at noon and came out at three o’clock, an hour earlier than the planned schedule due to the excruciating heat. The public was unable to see the workers when they were placed in the boxes.

Im obersten Stockwerk eines halb besetzten Bürogebäudes in der Industriezone von Guatemala-Stadt wurden acht Kartons aus Pappresten zusammengebaut und in gleicher Entfernung voneinander aufgestellt. Daneben wurden acht Stühle platziert.

Dann wurde ein Arbeitsangebot veröffentlicht: Gesucht wurden Personen, die bereit waren, für 100 Quetzal, als etwa 9 US-Dollar, vier Stunden lang in den Kartons zuzubringen. Die Reaktion war beträchtlich, und die Arbeiter wurden zu Mittag in die Kartons gesetzt. Sie verließen diese aufgrund der unerträglichen Hitze allerdings bereits um 15.00 Uhr, eine Stunde früher als geplant. Das Publikum bekam die Arbeiter nicht zu Gesicht, als diese in die Kartons stiegen.

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Santiago Sierra

**National Coat of Arms of Spain Stamped with Blood, 2022**

**National Flag Of Spain Submerged In Blood, 2021**

**Pigs Devouring The Italic Peninsula, 2012**

**Franz Erhard Walther and Santiago Sierra Demonstrating No. 46 From Walthers First Workset, 2011**

**War Veterans Facing The Corner, 2011 - Ongoing**

**Person Obstructing a Line of Containers, 2009**

**Attempt to Build Four 100x100 cm Sand Cubes, 2009**

**Teeth of the Last Gipsies of Ponticelli, 2008**

**Burned Buildings (Found Scene), 2008**

**Hooded Woman Seated Facing The Wall, 2003**

**Hiring and Arrangement of 30 Workers in Relation to Their Skin Color, 2002**

**3 Cubes of 100 cm on Each Side Moved 700 cm, 2002**

**PERSON PAID TO REMAIN TIED DOWN TO A WOODEN BLOCK, 2001**

**Object measuring 600 x 57 x 52 cm Constructed to be Held Horizontally to a Wall, 2001**

**10 Inch Line Shaved on The Heads of Two Junkies Who Received a Shot of Heroin as Payment, 2000**

**Obstruction of a road with different objects, 2000**

**The Wall of a Gallery Pulled Out, Inclined 60 Degrees From the Ground and Sustained by 5 People, 2000**

**8 PEOPLE PAID TO REMAIN INSIDE CARDBOARD BOXES, 1999**

**Obstruction of a Freeway With a Truck‘s Trailer, 1998**

**Footbridge Obstructed with Wrapping Tape, 1996**

**50 liters of gasoline in an abandoned field, 1994**

**50 kg of Plaster in the Street, 1994**

**2 Cylinders Each Measuring 250 × 250 cm, Composed of Posters That Have Been Torn Down, 1994**

**20 Pieces of Road Measuring 100 × 100 cm Pulled Up From the Ground, 1992**

Biography

Santiago Sierra's oeuvre stands out from the art history of the past 30 years like a massive black monolith. The Spaniard, who was born in 1966 and also lived in Latin America, knows like no other how to use the established forms and rules of contemporary art to give the violence and injustice of Western modernity a face - a face that is our own. The formal language of minimalism, in its distanced, cool way, is particularly suited to being short-circuited with the abstract economic and institutional apparatuses that bind people into the dehumanized conditions of production, migration, (self-)exploitation, and stigmatization. Those conditions, in other words, that guarantee the privileges of most of the viewers to whom Sierra's work addresses itself in the art world. Not everyone likes that. Sierra is the living shadow in the repressed bad conscience of power and money, with which people rule over people. His work has been honored institutionally many times, and in 2003 he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale.

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Exhibitions at KOW