Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 58 years old) is the most recognized Spanish conceptual artist in the world. The overwhelming creations with which he denounces the injustices and abuses that the power perpetrates against the most disadvantaged feed an extensive work that began three decades ago and that has been developed in 73 countries, especially in Mexico, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Despite the almost unanimous applause of critics and their popularity among art lovers, in Spain few retrospective exhibitions have been dedicated. The documentary Santiago Sierra, the finger on the sore, That this Saturday is projected at the Malaga Film Festival, it comes to fill that lagoon with ignorance. Directed by photographer and filmmaker Enrique Palacio, the film is the result of four years of research and monitoring of the artist. All their works are not represented because the effort would be impossible. Nor is a personal portrait of the artist made because, as the Sierra himself says, his life is not the subject with which his work is built. What Palacio has achieved is a complete portrait of the universe that interests the artist. “On his canvas he raises the realities with which we live,” says the director. And he adds: “His minimalist work, in black and white, is a call to awaken consciences without making the jump to activism. He draws, photography or films the issues that interest him. His way of focusing these issues is what made me think that there was a powerful story with Sierra to tell the world. ”
First artist who rejected the National Prize for Plastic Arts (2010) for not wanting Political prisoners, that he presented in the 2018 edition at the Helga de Alvear gallery and was withdrawn by order of the IFEMA direction, the enclosure where Arco is celebrated. That is why the documentary starts with a frame in which what Sierra thinks of the power of the creative work is collected: “Art can be very powerful and depends on how you use it. It is the favorite tool of politics, state and capitalism. Art is what the Church uses in its temples and in its performative rituals to fascinate the believer. We are artists. We must find a way to face all that. ”
With that phrase, a declaration of intentions, the projection of fragments of many of his works is happening, accompanied by voices of experts linked in different ways to the artist. They speak, among others, the recently deceased Helga de Alvear, her Spanish gallery owner and producer of the documentary; Manuel Segade, director of Reina Sofía; Cuauhtémoc Medina, Chief Conservative of the MUAC, and Rosa Martínez, Spanish commissioner of the 2003 edition of the Venice Biennial, in which Sierra represented Spain with a performance On the borders and for this he closed the pavilion to whom they did not accredit being Spanish. The outraged visitors were part of the representation. There were no exceptions. The documentary recalls that the jury of the biennial granted by the Golden Lion could not access and perhaps, he points out, Spain and his artist ran out of prize.
Santiago Sierra is a creator little to grant interviews. In this case he has answered with WhatsApp audios to the questions that the country sent by email. The artist does not believe that this documentary is any kind of anthological. “There would be a lot of work to be an anthological. That was not the goal. The director has worked the project as he has considered. I have only been the object of study, ”he says.
Spain, a country hostile to art
Sierra has done his work in numerous corners of the world. The documentary points out four scenarios that stand out about others: Mexico, Spain, Italy and Germany. “In Mexico I lived 12 years. I owe that country to know a part of the world that I did not know that it would exist, with a new social organization for me. He introduced me to unknown issues, such as the breed. Spain, the country in which I was born and in which I live, is very hostile to art. The institutional is very important and that generates a rather docile art. Spain has very little weight in the art world, it is very peripheral. In Italy (where he works for the Prometheus gallery of Milan) I have always worked very comfortable because the artist is very respected and they are very art lovers. In Germany I have also worked a lot and I am very interested in his cultural scene, more serious and powerful ”.
The documentary starts with its famous piece on the flag of Spain and then parades works inspired by marginalization, exclusion or labor exploitation. When asked what worries you the most in these days when prebelic songs are heard again, the adjective points out: they are not prebel. “They are warlike, directly. This has never stopped. Westerners have always lived from war, taking from other countries what they did not have in their own. What happens is that we now have it in the Mediterranean, in Europe, and more information than ever comes to us. War is part of what we live. He spoke of this in The veterans (Work in which 25 punished military is seen looking at the wall for their 2,205 state crimes) ”.
The German art critic Georg Imdhal says on the screen that artists like George Grosz or Otto Dix could not avoid the third Reich. What does Sierra think? “The work of art cannot do anything against a nuclear missile. We do our work. Dogs bark and we make art. ”
Censorship
The Arco Fair has been a formidable stage to make it known internationally. There came the tour World Cup NO And there he suffered in 2018 censorship for Political prisoners, that Helga de Alvear had to pick up with great disgust. Did they shot them by the censors? “It was an unfortunate spectacle, and on top of that of the politicians prisoners instead of political prisoners. My piece went beyond the Catalan nationalists. I also referred to environmentalists, abertzalas or the Andalusian field workers. But censorship is effective and seeks silence through fear. ” They did not know the censors that when the piece retired had already been sold to the collector Tatxo Benet, according to Benet himself in the documentary.
Santiago Sierra appears little in the documentary, and there is no talk at any time of his life or personal circumstances. Is it a deliberate secretism in Banksy Plan? “It is not deliberate, although it is not possible to count private things because I am not the matter of my work. It is the director of the director, not mine. I thank him and Helga de Alvear for having financed. ”