Door Plate, 2006
Cast aluminum relief sign, with paint, 59 x 69 x 2 cm (23 x 27 x ¾ in). Edition: XV, signed and numbered on separate label.
With this edition, Santiago Sierra presents a stark and provocative meditation on the politics of exclusion. Echoing his controversial intervention at the 2003 Venice Biennale – where the Spanish Pavilion was bricked up, allowing entry only to those with a Spanish passport via a rear door – this work expands on the theme of restricted access with biting irony. The plate lists a seemingly endless and contradictory catalogue of those denied entry: from “the unemployed” to “employees,” “pregnant women” to “housewives,” “non-English speakers” to “people with computer skills.” In doing so, Sierra parodies the arbitrary and often discriminatory mechanisms through which institutions and power structures regulate inclusion and belonging. By mimicking the tone and formality of bureaucratic signage, Door Plate exposes the absurdity and cruelty that can underpin systems of control. It confronts the viewer with the mechanisms of social, political, and economic exclusion, and in its exaggerated scope, forces us to question who decides who belongs – and who does not.
