Santiago Sierra: with NO as a banner

Santiago Sierra has managed to become one of the most internationally recognized conceptual artists through his work.

The Helga de Alvear Museum, a collector and patron of his work, is exhibiting this year at its Extremadura headquarters 13 of the artist's works that it owns in its collection, in addition to his personal archive and the screening of the documentary The Finger in the Wound, which director Enrique Palacio has made about his creative trajectory.

Titled Santiago Sierra. 2,068 Teeth, The Maelström, Archive, and Black Flag, the exhibition, says its curator Alexis Callado, “explores themes such as immigration, exploitation, colonial devastation, and anarchism, highlighting the tensions between the economic, the ethical, and the aesthetic”.

The artist resigned in 2010 from the National Plastic Arts Award (awarded with 30,000 euros and granted by the Ministry of Culture) for refusing to collaborate with some practices of the State. In some photographs, he is seen wearing a ring that represents the word NO over two of his fingers.

2,068 Teeth (2022-2025)

Just stopping to read the description that the Helga de Alvear Museum makes of its works is enough to understand at a glance the character of his work, how he straightforwardly approaches the most murky areas of contemporary reality:

“In 2,068 Teeth Sierra focuses his aim on migrants arriving in the Mexican city of Tijuana from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. These cross the continent in large caravans to avoid the dangers of traveling alone (murders, assaults, kidnappings, rapes…).”

“However, once they reach the border between Mexico and San Diego, they are forced to wait endlessly for the moment to enter the country in terrible conditions, rejected in concentration camps or migrant shelters.”

“The act of 'showing the teeth' reflects our most primitive behaviors. It is a visceral act of threat and defense, as the universally understood phrase makes clear. It records a moment of fear and threat, of attack and defense, of showing strength and hiding fragility. It is a return to a primitive, pre-linguistic position that encompasses both individual social behavior and that of groups.”

Music is not what it seems

“The installation consists of 126 photographs and the sound of a slowed-down and inverted cumbia. The chosen rhythm is a popular musical phenomenon that arises from the fusion of Mexican cumbia and Colombian cumbia. By manipulating this cumbia, slowing down the beats per minute and reversing the audio, the artist obtains a disturbing and unsettling sound.”

“The motif of teeth is recurrent in Sierra’s work. Already in 2008, Dientes de los Últimos Gitanos by Ponticelli, the author recorded the dentures of the last two Gypsy families in this Italian region, two weeks before their homes were burned down and this ethnicity disappeared permanently from the area.”

Tribute to his patron

This is the first exhibition inaugurated at the Helga de Alvear Contemporary Art Museum in Cáceres since the death of the collector and patron.

The exhibition emphasizes the relevance and presence of Sierra’s work in its collection and at the same time celebrates and pays tribute to his gallery owner, Helga de Alvear, who constantly supported the artist throughout much of his professional career, explains Alexis Callado.

Additionally, for the first time, Santiago Sierra’s archive, donated by the artist to the Museum, can be seen, documenting the connection that existed between them, as well as some key moments of his artistic practice.

Beginnings at El Ojo Atómico

After earning a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, Santiago Sierra completed his artistic training in Hamburg, where he studied with professors F. E. Walter, S. Brown, and B. J. Blume.

His beginnings are linked to alternative artistic circuits in the Spanish capital -El Ojo Atómico Espacio P-, although he would develop much of his career in Mexico (1995-2006) and Italy (2006-10).

His work has had a significant influence on literature and art criticism. Sierra’s work strives to reveal the perverse power networks that lead to alienation and exploitation of workers, injustice and violence, wealth inequalities produced by capitalism, the deviation of work and money, and racial discrimination in a world of unidirectional migratory movements (surnorth), reports the Museum.

Revisiting and reinterpreting certain strategies that characterized minimalist, conceptual, and performance art of the sixties and seventies, Sierra interrupts, for example, the flows of capital and goods (Obstruction of a route with a cargo container, 1998; Person obstructing a line of containers, 2009).

Or hires workers to reveal their precarious circumstances (20 workers in a ship’s hold, 2001); explores mechanisms of racial segregation derived from economic inequalities (Hiring and arranging 30 workers according to skin color, 2002; Economic study of the skin of Caracans, 2006); and refutes narratives that legitimize a democracy based on state violence (Veterans of the wars in Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq in front of the corner, 2010-2; The managers, 2012).

An internationally recognized career

He has exhibited in important museums, art centers, and galleries around the world, such as the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art ARS 01 (Helsinki), the Kunst Werke (Berlin), the Kunsthaus Bregenz (Austria), the PS1 of MoMA (New York), the Artium (Vitoria), or the PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporánea (Milan).

His work is represented by major galleries such as Helga de Alvear (Madrid, Spain), Prometeo Gallery (Milan, Italy), Labor (Mexico), and KOW (Berlin, Germany).

Helga de Alvear was a gallery owner, collector, and patron of Santiago Sierra for over 20 years, from the start of their relationship in 2003 until her passing in February 2025. The Helga de Alvear Museum preserves 28 works by the artist in its collection.

Exhibition Santiago Sierra. 2,068 Teeth, The Maelström, Archive, and Black Flag
Helga de Alvear Contemporary Art Museum.
Calle Pizarro, 10. Cáceres.
Until September 21. Hours:
In summer, from June 1 to September 30:
Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 14:00 and 18:00 to 21:00.
In winter, from October 1 to May 31:
Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 14:00 and 17:00 to 20:00.
Every Sunday: from 10:00 to 14:30.