This week’s contribution to Gulf Labor’s 52 Weeks is by Matt Greco & Greg Sholette
To view more images and a video from this week’s contribution please click on the links via “images” and “video”
Repayment of recruitment fees by foreign workers on Saadiyat Island often takes months or years and is “the single greatest factor in creating conditions of forced labor.” – Human Rights Watch Report
Despite being one of the wealthiest nations in the world Abu Dhabi has yet to agree on measures to assure fair labor conditions even as they seek to legitimize their cultural endeavors by purchasing the choicest of Western brands: The Guggenheim, Louvre, New York University. The Workers Quarters Collectable was “shop-dropped” at the Guggenheim Museum gift shop in New York as part of a larger campaign by Gulf Labor Coalition called “52 Weeks.”
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.
