Guy Mannes-Abbott, poster, 2013
On Saadiyat, Rafael Vinoly’s NYU campus has been built, and Jean Nouvel’s Louvre AD is being built, by that “forced labor”. The foundations of Norman Foster’s Zayed National Museum and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim AD have been laid by the same means. Before further memorialising a dishonorable legacy (contracts to build-out the latter schemes are expected spring 2014), they have time, occasion and opportunity to change course.
—Guy Mannes-Abbott
Gulf Labor is a coalition of artists and activists who have been working since 2011 to highlight the coercive recruitment, and deplorable living and working conditions of migrant laborers in Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island (Island of Happiness). Our campaign focuses on the workers who are building the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Sheikh Zayed National Museum (in collaboration with the British Museum).
“52 Weeks” is a one year campaign starting in October 2013. Artists, writers, and activists from different cities and countries are invited to contribute a work, a text, or action each week that relates to or highlights the unjust living and working conditions of migrant laborers building cultural institutions in Abu Dhabi.
To learn more visit: www.gulflabour.org
For additional information, please email: contact@gulflabour.org