Santiago Sierra

Santiago Sierra is a Spanish artist born in Madrid in 1966. He is best known for his provocative performance art and installations that often address issues of power, inequality, and exploitation.

Sierra studied fine arts at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and later attended the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. His early work was influenced by conceptual art and minimalism, but he later shifted towards more politically charged work.

One of Sierra's most well-known works is "160 cm Line Tattooed on 4 People" (1999), in which he paid four prostitutes to stand in a line and have a tattooed line drawn across their backs. The work comments on the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, particularly women, in the sex industry.

Other notable works include "Workers Who Cannot Be Paid, Remunerated to Remain Inside Cardboard Boxes" (2000), in which Sierra paid a group of undocumented immigrants to live in cardboard boxes for several days, and "250 cm Line Tattooed on Six Paid People" (2001), which repeated the concept of the earlier work but used volunteers who were paid for their participation.

Sierra's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Venice Biennale, and the Tate Modern in London. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Spanish National Visual Arts Award in 2010.

Sierra's work has been controversial and has sparked debates about the ethics of paying individuals to participate in art projects that could be seen as exploitative. Despite this, he remains one of the most prominent and influential contemporary artists in Spain and around the world.