He is known for his provocative stunts, which have included tattooing the backs of drug addicts, and spraying a group of stateless Iraqis with foam.
But the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra provoked outrage among Jewish groups in Germany yesterday with his latest work - a homemade gas chamber set up in a former synagogue.
The Mexico-based artist has parked six cars outside the synagogue and attached their exhaust pipes to the building using plastic tubes.
It is then filled with deadly gas. Visitors are invited to go inside one by one wearing a gas mask, escorted by a firefighter. Before being allowed in, they have to sign a disclaimer stating they realise the room is full of carbon monoxide.
The project opened to the public on Sunday, creating huge queues, and runs until the end of April.
Sierra says the installation - entitled 245 cubic metres - is a protest against the "banalisation of the Holocaust".
Sierra's previous artistic targets have included capitalism, exploitation and the labour market. Yesterday, however, Jewish leaders in Germany reacted furiously. They described the installation in the small Rhineland town of Pulheim as "an abuse of artistic freedom".
"It's a scandal. It's an unbelievable provocation at the expense of Holocaust victims," said Stephan Kramer, secretary of Germany's central Jewish council. He added: "It doesn't just insult them but the entire Jewish community."
Others were also left seething. "It's despicable," Ralph Giordano, a writer and Holocaust survivor told German radio. "What's artistic about attaching the poisonous exhaust from six cars into a former synagogue?" He added: "And who gave permission for this?"
Local mayor Karl August Morisse yesterday refused to comment. Earlier, however, he defended his decision to stage Sierra's work in the synagogue, which is used as a cultural centre, and has previously hosted other international artists. The synagogue, on the outskirts of Cologne, survived the second world war, and is next to a restored Jewish cemetery desecrated by the Nazis.
Luke Harding @ Guardian
MORE ON SANTIAGO SIERRA
Originally from Spain, but now based in Mexico, Sierra has become well known for his controversial video work and installations, which highlight the problematic nature of a capitalist economy.
His past projects are remarkably diverse; in one work he used petrol to set fire to a gallery on its opening night and in New York he hired someone to live behind a wall at P.S.1 Gallery for 15 days, 24 hours a day.
The tasks Sierra selects are usually repetitive, pointless and absurd. For his solo exhibition at the IKON Gallery in 2002, Sierra paid an Irish street vagrant in Birmingham’s New Street to say "My participation in this piece could generate a profit of 72,000 dollars. I am being paid five pounds."
While this appears highly exploitative, the beggar in the video, and many other of Sierra’s participants are willing participants and are paid at least as much as the local average wage.
His work could be seen as merely reflecting the harsh reality of a market economy where everyone has their price, but much of his work has a powerful minimalist aesthetic and a poetic simplicity that transforms its political rhetoric into something more subtle and indeterminate.
It can also be seen in the tradition of Arte Povera and the socially engaged process artists of the 1970s. Santiago Sierra represented Spain at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003.
LAST EXHIBITION AT LISSON GALLERY
Lisson New Space opens with a two-part exhibition by Spanish born artist Santiago Sierra. For Part I, visitors to the gallery will be confronted by corrugated iron sheets that have been attached to façade of the building preventing any access to the gallery.
Sierra alludes to the economic crash in Mexico, which saw crowds of people unable to gain access to their own money as the banks closed their doors. Sierra critiques at the same time the commercial, elitist aspect of the artworld by excluding people who rarely experience such exclusion.
For Part II, Sierra has created two linked ‘actions’ in the gallery entitled "Workers facing the wall" and "Worker facing into a corner".
Participants in the action have been instructed by Sierra to stand in silence with their heads bowed for one hour a day during the course of the exhibition.
As is usual with Sierra’s work, the participants have been recruited locally and are being paid the minimum wage.
Standing head bowed and in silence is a submissive stance and potentially uncomfortable, though visitors to the gallery will be equally discomforted by what they experience.
Lisson Gallery