‘250cm line tattooed on six paid people,’ Santiago Sierra

Espacio Aglutinador Havana December 1999

Galerie Peter Kilchmann Zurich

In 1999, Spanish artist Santiago Sierra paid six unemployed young men in Cuba to take part in one of his installation pieces. The men were offered $30 each to participate, and stripped to their shorts to become a part of another of Sierra’s human experiments, this time in the Espacia Aglutinador, Havana’s oldest art space. And their job? To go under the needle. Sierra had the men tattooed – one straight, horizontal line reaching across each of their backs.

A line-up of young, able warriors symbolically inked for social battle.

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