At 10:00 pm on March 24, 2014, members of Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) joined by the OWS Illuminator occupied the facade of the Guggenheim Museum in Uptown Manhattan for over 40 minutes.
The Illuminator Joins Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction:
Rebranding the Guggenheim for Exploiting Migrant Workers in Abu Dhabi
At 10:00 pm on March 24, 2014, members of Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) joined by the OWS Illuminator occupied the facade of Guggenheim Museum in Uptown Manhattan for over 40 minutes. G.U.L.F. rebranded the Guggenheim’s flagship museum in protest of complicity at the ill-treatment and economic exploitation of migrant workers in Abu Dhabi who are beginning to build the new Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim on Saadiyat (aka ‘Island of Happiness’. G.U.L.F.’s act of messaging solidarity follows recent reports from Human Rights Watch, as well as investigative findings from members of the Gulf Labor Coalition (some of whom overlap with G.U.L.F.) who have just returned from a fact-finding mission in Abu Dhabi where where they visited several worker camps and spoke with workers. They confirmed a reality that is the opposite of happy: multiple labor violations, generated by a system built on human suffering and debt bondage.
Last night, G.U.L.F. renewed the call on the Guggenheim to own up to its responsibility as a leading cultural, educational and art institution, and not take economic advantage of the workers seeking the ‘Gulf Dream’. Workers should not be caught in a debt spiral where they must work for years on building the museum only to pay the fees that brought them to Abu Dhabi in the first place. Guggenheim has a choice here. It must refuse to lend its cultural capital to build the ‘Island of Happiness’ where art and luxury mask and maintain a racialized exploitative labor regime, while using its PR department and those of its partners to hide the facts and mislead the public. Unless the Guggenheim changes course with the new museum in Abu Dhabi, G.U.L.F. will continue to remind the Guggenheim that their brand is: “1% Global Museum.”
1% Museums means 1% Art.
Art built on Oppression Loses Meaning.
There are other possible Futures of Art.
Related Film Screening | America’s War Workers
Reported by Anjali Kamat & Produced by Samuel Black for Fault Lines Al-Jazeera
March 27, 2014
SCA Flex Space
20 Cooper Square, Floor 4
6:00 PM
Post-Screening Discussion with Anjali Kamat, Samuel Black, Paula Chakravartty & Darryl Li
wish i was an artist. but in solidarity from the labour and fisherfolk movements in southasia – RIGHT ON!