WORKERS HOUSING SAADIYAT ISLAND: GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM SOUVENIR (2013)

Transcription

1 GREGORY SHOLETTE AND MATT GRECO WORKERS HOUSING SAADIYAT ISLAND: GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM SOUVENIR (2013) :50: THRESHOLDS 44 Workers Housing saadiyat island: guggenheim museum souvenir

2 186 THRESHOLDS 44 Workers Housing saadiyat island: guggenheim museum souvenir 13-sHolette-greCo-WorkersHousingsaadiyatisland.gdoC VERSION 1 LAST MODIFIED ON DECEMBER 3, :15 PM

3 15-mit-tHresHolds-sHolettegreCo.indd VERSION 42 LAST MODIFIED ON MARCH 17, :36 PM Workers Housing Saadiyat Island: Guggenheim Museum Souvenir is a collaborative artwork and intervention by artists Greg Sholette and Matt Greco. It consists of a 3D print modeled on the compact, isolated blocks of worker s housing built on Saadiyat Island, a beige patch of desert set miles from the closest city of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Saadiyat Island is where a new Guggenheim Museum designed by star-chitect Frank Gehry will soon stand along side a branch of the Louvre Museum. Yet while in Arabic Saadiyat Island means Island of Happiness, it is anything but a happy place for the thousands of foreign workers laboring in conditions that would be considered illegal and intolerable in Europe, Canada, the United States and most developed nations. Workers Housing Saadiyat Island: Guggenheim Museum Souvenir (2013). Gregory Sholette and Matt Greco. 3D Prints with packaging (unlimited edition). 2" x 2" x 3" (each). All images courtesy of the artists. 187 THRESHOLDS 44 Workers Housing saadiyat island: guggenheim museum souvenir

4 188 THRESHOLDS 44 Workers Housing saadiyat island: guggenheim museum souvenir Despite being one of the wealthiest nations in the world, Abu Dhabi has yet to agree on measures to assure fair labor conditions even as they seek to legitimize their cultural endeavors by purchasing the choicest of Western brands: The Guggenheim, Louvre, New York University. Workers Housing Saadiyat Island: Guggenheim Museum Souvenir was shop-dropped at the Guggenheim Museum gift shop in New York as part of a larger campaign by Gulf Labor Coalition (GLC) called 52 Weeks in which a group of artists, writers, and activists from different cities and countries contribute one work, text, or action each week that highlights the unjust living and working conditions of the migrant laborers who build cultural institutions in Abu Dhabi. GLC is an informally structured group of artists and activists focused on migrant worker s rights in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. There, a new, Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum is being planned. GLC called for a boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi in Artist and GLC Member Mariam Ghani described the strategy as engagement through disengagement. That is to say GLC did not break off discussion with the museum director and senior staff, but instead continued to hold negotiations and hoped for a breakthrough. Thanks to artists such as Walid Raad, whose work the Guggenheim had hoped to display in its Abu Dhabi museum, GLC can use its cultural capital, plus the shaming power of the highly publicized boycott to leverage these negotiations. However, after years of no significant movement on the part of the Guggenheim or the UAE towards improving conditions, a splinter group of GLC called Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) began direct actions inside the institution s public spaces. On May Day 2015 G.U.L.F. organized an occupation of the Guggenheim s signature Frank Lloyd Wright building on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. One week later, in Venice, Italy the group made a marine landing on the canal entrance of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and occupied that institution. Following this new level of pressure, the museum s administration finally agreed to bring GLC together with its Board of Trustees and such NGOs as the International Labor Organization and Human Wrights Watch. As of November 2015, GLC awaits the start of this new level of negotiation. Should the negotiations fail to take place, the group s highly varied tactics are ready to be redeployed. To learn more visit: gregory sholette is a new york-based artist, writer, activist and founding member of Political art documentation/distribution (Pad/d), repohistory, and gulf labor Coalition. His publications include It s The Political Economy, Stupid co-edited with oliver ressler, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture, both Pluto Press uk. recent installations include imaginary archive at the institute of Contemporary art, university of Pennsylvania and Zeppelin university, germany, as well as the Precarious Workers Pageant in venice, italy. sholette is a graduate of the Whitney independent study Program in Critical theory, associate of the art, design and the Public domain program at the graduate school of design Harvard university, as well as associate Professor in the Queens College art department, City university of new york where he helped establish the new mfa Concentration spq (social Practice Queens). matt greco is a sculptor, photographer and designer living and working in Queens ny. He received his BFa from armstrong atlantic university and his mfa from Queens College Cuny. His work has been exhibited internationally and domestically including the telfair museum of art (ga), desoto row gallery (ga), the dorsky gallery (ny), the ny studio gallery (ny), gallery 126 (ireland), the Beacon gallery (Ca), the Baron gallery (oh), and the kurbas Center (ukraine). He is an adjunct professor of art at Queens College Cuny and is the founder and director of the digital imaging laboratory there. 13-sHolette-greCo-WorkersHousingsaadiyatisland.gdoC VERSION 1 LAST MODIFIED ON DECEMBER 3, :15 PM

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