Citizens

Richard Hamilton, The citizen  1981–3

The citizen was based on stills from a 1980 news report about the IRA ‘dirty protest’ at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. Paramilitary inmates had initially been given a ‘Special Category’ status. This was revoked, and they were treated as ordinary criminals. In response they decided to wear only prison blankets and to daub their cell walls with excrement. Hamilton wrote that he could not ‘condone the methods’ of the IRA, but was struck by the resemblance to Christian martyrdom. He also felt a connection to the prisoners since they had produced ‘wall paintings’. One panel shows the prisoner and his cell; the other is more abstract, an unconfined space.

Gallery label, January 2019

Andrea Bowers, The Worker’s Maypole, An Offering for May Day 1894 (Illustration by Walter Crane)  2015

The source for Bowers’ drawing is an illustration by the British artist Walter Crane (1845–1915), published in The Clarion, a socialist magazine, in 1894. Emphasising a continuous tradition of political activism, Bowers recreated the image on sections of cardboard boxes, using a permanent marker pen. She had seen similar materials used to construct placards by twenty-first century protestors such as the Occupy Wall Street encampment. She also altered some of the text on Crane’s banners to reflect more recent political campaigns.

Gallery label, February 2016

Fred Wilson, Senegal  2009

Fred Wilson, Saint Vincent-Grenadines  2009

Fred Wilson, Benin  2009

Teresa Margolles, Flag I  2009

The fabric of Flag I contains traces of blood, soil and other substances from the sites of murders around the northern border of Mexico, testifying to the thousands of violent deaths associated with the powerful drug cartels that control smuggling routes to the United States. Another version of this work was shown at the Venice Biennial in 2009, where Margolles represented Mexico with an exhibition titled What Else Could We Talk About? As the government failed to intervene in the drug wars, the blood-stained cloth was hung outside the Mexican pavilion as a memorial for citizens that the nation ignored.

Gallery label, November 2015

Fred Wilson, Seychelles  2009

Fred Wilson, Swaziland  2009

Fred Wilson, Ghana  2009

Fred Wilson, Jamaica  2009

Fred Wilson, Nigeria  2009

Fred Wilson, Zimbabwe  2009

Fred Wilson, Gabon  2009

Fred Wilson, Haiti  2009

Fred Wilson, Comoros  2009

Fred Wilson, Dominica  2009

Fred Wilson, Antigua-Barbuda  2009

Siah Armajani, Room for Deportees  2017

Room for Deportees 2017 is a large-scale installation by the Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani, comprising a metal fence topped with barbed wire, wood panels, an American-style mailbox, a hat and a handbag. On one side the mailbox sits against a chain-link fence, which separates two uncomfortable looking seats – a bench and a chair – suggesting a temporary holding space for the deportees referred to in the work’s title. Traces of absent figures linger in the fedora hat resting on the single chair, as well as the handbag perched on the bench. A model of a red house sits lopsidedly against one arm of the bench, perhaps gesturing to a place once lived in or a desired dwelling. At the end of the fence stands a narrow gable-roofed guard booth recalling early American wooden balloon-frame structures from the mid-nineteenth century. In the booth hangs a black and white photograph given to the artist in the 1970s, documenting a nineteenth-century American bridge construction site. Armajani has annotated this, designating it as the location of the first US-Iranian cooperative space probe, identifying two of the three figures in the image as ‘HRH Shah of Iran’ and ‘B. Dowlatshahi, architect’. The third figure, sitting in a wagon, is named as ‘Siah Armajani, on the launch pad’ (Walker Art Center 2018, pp.86–7). A pencilled dotted line suggests the projected path of the vehicle, which would allegedly travel a distance of 10.7 light-years before reaching the star system Cygni. The inclusion and manipulation of the image highlights Armajani’s interest in the spirit of early American vernacular architecture, as well as in the most cutting-edge advances in technology, namely space travel, themes he has continuously explored throughout his career.

Fred Wilson, Central African Republic  2009

Fred Wilson, Niger  2009

Fred Wilson, Trinidad-Tobago  2009

Fred Wilson, Uganda  2009

Siah Armajani, Seven Rooms of Hospitality  2017

This multi-part work by the Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani comprises seven 3D-printed plastic architectural models, individually titled, which relate directly to the artist’s large-scale works in his series Rooms for Hospitality 2017 (one of which is also in Tate’s collection; see the installation Room for Deportees 2017 [Tate T15571]). The models began as a response to an incident that took place in August 2015, in which seventy-one refugees and asylum seekers from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were found suffocated in the back of a lorry that had been abandoned on the side of an Austrian motorway. Using 3D printing techniques, Armajani created a miniature replica of the truck; titled Room for Asylum Seekers, it features the logo of the Hyza meat company and the banner text: ’71 ASYLUM SEEKERS • 60 MEN • 8 WOMEN • 3 CHILDREN • ALL DEAD’. Also in the group are six other architectural evocations of the conditions suffered by migrants and refugees, largely equated with the experiences of confinement, liminality and invisibility. (At the time of the tragedy, HYZA as. did not own the lorry, it having been sold the previous year to a third party who, in breach of their obligations, failed to remove the HYZA logo and advertising. HYZA has condemned the act and expressed its sympathy with the victims.)