Using Poor Workers As Fodder For Art – Is That OK?

Spanish-born artist Santiago Sierra hired 10 Iraqi immigrant workers and sprayed them with liquid plastic to make his latest work. “My first reaction to the use of living men and women in this way was revulsion. I felt indignant that a modern artist should use vulnerable people to make work that will be shown to a small, rarefied, and comparatively affluent audience. Is it not a violation of human dignity to pay immigrants to participate in so hazardous and humiliating a process? As visitors to the exhibition, are we not somehow colluding in the economic exploitation of migrant workers?”