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Who is Santiago Sierra? Spanish artist slammed for planning exhibit of British flag soaked in Indigenous blood

Sierra said his project is an 'acknowledgment of the pain and destruction colonialism has caused First Nations peoples, devasting entire cultures and civilizations'

Spanish artist Santiago Sierra has come under fire for a planned art exhibit that involves displaying the British flag soaked in Indigenous blood. The artist is known for his performance art and installation art and has been called out in the past for his controversial pieces. Sierra's planned art installation, titled 'Union Flag', will be displayed as part of the Dark Mofo music and art festival which opens in June in Tasmania, Australia.

Sierra intends his 'Union Flag' installation to be an "acknowledgment of the pain and destruction colonialism has caused First Nations peoples, devasting entire cultures and civilizations," according to a statement to The Art Newspaper. Sierra is asking First Nations peoples who live in Australia but come "from countries and territories colonized by the British Empire at some point in their history" to register their interest to donate the blood for the artwork.

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According to the outlet, one participant will be chosen at random to represent each country colonized by Britain and will be asked to give a small amount of blood under medical supervision. Sierra wrote in his statement, "The blood will be combined in an aluminum bucket in which the British flag will be immersed."

The statement continues, "The use of the British flag is not about any specific people, but rather seeks to reflect on the material on which states and empires are built. The use of First Peoples’ blood from different populations, and its indiscriminate mixing, has impact within the act itself — all blood is equally red and has the same consistency, regardless of the race or culture of the person supplying it."

He adds, "The First Nations people of Australia suffered enormously and brutally from British colonialism. Nowhere more so than in Tasmania where the Black War in the early 19th century had a devastating impact, almost killing the entire Tasmanian Aboriginal population — an act that has since been defined as genocide." The Black War was a conflict between British settlers and Tasmanian Aboriginal people that lasted from the 1820s to the 1830s.

Sierra's artwork and Dark Mofo's request for people to volunteer to give blood has predictably sparked outrage as many took to social media to express their contempt for the artist's project. One user wrote, "The fucking audacity of a white man asking for the blood of Indigenous people for his 'art'." Another tweeted, "As someone born and raised in Peru, which was colonised by Spain, I condemn this use of Indigenous blood to soak ANY flag. Dark Mofo, and the artist involved, Santiago Sierra, should be rebuked in the strongest possible terms. This is highly irresponsible, and deeply immoral."

Another user opined, "Santiago Sierra is not First Nations. First Nations people don’t benefit from this. Dark Mofo maybe try paying people for their blood as a start." Another tweet said the project was a "spectacle of tonedeafness" because Dark Mofo was commissioning a Spanish artist to create a work that required Aboriginal people to donate blood so that he could pour it on a Union Jack to "comment on colonial exploitation". The tweet ended with the words, "YOU CANT MAKE THIS SHIT UP AND FUCK THAT GUY, SLOW FUCKING CLAP DARK MOFO."

This is not Sierra's first artwork to cause outrage. When he was chosen to represent Spain at the Venice Biennale in 2003, he created an installation that only visitors holding Spanish identity cards were allowed to see, to show how the leading art world shindig was premised on nationalist pride rather than aesthetic merit, according to The Guardian.

Three years later, his artwork titled '245 Cubic Metres' was an installation in Pulheim near Cologne, which created lethal levels of carbon monoxide by attaching hoses to the exhaust pipes of six cars. The 'gas chamber work', as the installation is referred to, had visitors admitted for five minutes individually wearing breathing apparatus and accompanied by a firefighter. The Guardian reported that the artwork was intended as an attack on "the trivialization of the Holocaust." The artwork was condemned by Germany's Central Council of Jews.