HAPPENING 20 SEP–20 DEC '26 | Brutus Art Space presents DEATH & MONEY, the largest solo exhibition of Santiago Sierra’s work staged in the Netherlands, from 20 September to 20 December 2026. Curated by A/POLITICAL, the exhibition brings together seven monumental works examining the relationship between warfare, economic power, state violence and exploitation.
The exhibition includes installations, videos, text works and long-duration performances spread across Brutus’s industrial spaces in Rotterdam-West. Several works name victims of political conflicts and state violence, while others examine how money, labour and systems of authority shape everyday life.
Seven works confront power
The exhibition begins in De Barbaar with The Copenhagen Declaration from 2014, created by Sierra with Danish artist Jens Haaning. Its central statement, TIRED OF THIS GLOBAL SADISTIC REGIME, sets the tone for an exhibition that does not offer much room for comfortable distance.
Sierra is known for works that expose hierarchies surrounding labour, class, borders and political power. Rather than illustrating these subjects from afar, his installations and performances often place the systems themselves in front of the visitor, using repetition, duration and physical presence to make their weight difficult to ignore.
“Santiago Sierra creates work that challenges, provokes and sparks debate. That is precisely why we believe it is important to show his work,” says Brutus director Sanne ten Brink. “With DEATH & MONEY, he asks an uncomfortable but urgent question: how do we relate to war, violence and injustice when we are confronted with them every day?”
One of the works extending beyond the exhibition rooms is The Three Commandments of Post-Colonialism. The façade of De Kathedraal will carry three statements: STOP THE STEALING, RETURN THE STOLEN and COMPENSATE THE VICTIMS. Together, they form a direct demand for recognition of colonial dispossession and historical injustice.
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Performances name the victims
Two existing performances centre on the public reading of names and recorded circumstances of death. In 1549 State Crimes from 2007, performers recite the names, dates, locations and circumstances of 1,549 people who disappeared or were killed on the orders of the Mexican state between 1968 and 2007.
The Names of Those Killed in the Syrian Conflict Between the 15th March 2011 and the 31st December 2016 was first presented in 2017. Over eight consecutive days, the names of 144,308 people killed during the Syrian conflict are read aloud, turning a figure that can feel impossible to comprehend into a continuous sequence of individual names.
The duration of these works is central to their impact. Visitors may hear only a fragment of the reading, but the performance continues long after they leave, making the scale of the loss visible through time rather than through a single image.
Another work, 25000000 UAH from 2017, connects money directly with labour and political power. Three Ukrainian women spent twelve uninterrupted hours counting 25 million Ukrainian hryvnia, at the time equivalent to one million US dollars. The sound of the counting will be heard throughout the Brutus exhibition.
Bodies under control
Across the exhibition, Sierra presents 2 Exercise Sequences for a Popular Gymnastics, developed between 2023 and 2026. The work was made with communities including antifascist participants in Madrid, residents of Morro Dois Irmãos in Rio de Janeiro and people in Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico.
The series recreates physical positions of submission imposed by police and security services. By presenting these poses as repeated exercises, Sierra draws attention to the ways governments can regulate, restrain and intimidate bodies before violence reaches its most extreme forms.
The exhibition title places death and money beside each other without treating them as separate themes. Across the seven works, economic interests, political authority and physical violence appear as connected parts of the same structures.
Sierra’s approach is intentionally confrontational. The exhibition asks visitors to consider their own position inside political and economic systems, including the distance created when war, death and inequality are encountered primarily through news reports, data and images.
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New performance streams to Rotterdam
DEATH & MONEY also premieres a newly commissioned performance provisionally titled ___ State Crimes. Its final number will be announced on 31 August 2026.
The project will recite the names of Palestinians identified by the work’s organisers as having been killed since the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 as a result of actions by the Israeli state, its armed forces and settlers. The performance begins live at A/POLITICAL in London on 21 September and will be streamed internationally around the clock to Brutus and other partner institutions until every name has been read.
The new work is produced by A/POLITICAL and co-curated by Maricel Alvarez. A/POLITICAL was founded in 2013 and supports artistic practices that test society’s aesthetic, political and moral boundaries through acquisitions, large commissions and long-term work with artists’ archives and estates.
The London-based organisation also curates the wider exhibition at Brutus. Its involvement connects Sierra’s Rotterdam presentation with an international network of politically focused artists, institutions and audiences.
Santiago Sierra at Brutus
Santiago Sierra was born in Madrid in 1966 and continues to live and work there. He studied fine art at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City.
His practice draws on conceptual and minimalist art while focusing on the social and economic hierarchies that determine how people work, move and live. More information about Sierra and his previous projects is available at https://www.santiago-sierra.com/.
Brutus occupies around 6,000 square metres of industrial space in a former harbour complex in Rotterdam-West. Founded by Joep van Lieshout in 2008, it has operated as an independent foundation under director Sanne ten Brink since 2022.
Its raw architecture provides an appropriate setting for Sierra’s large installations and long-duration performances. Rather than presenting the work inside a neutral white gallery, the exhibition places it within spaces already marked by Rotterdam’s industrial and economic history.
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Plan your visit
The opening of DEATH & MONEY takes place on Saturday 19 September from 16:00 to 18:00. Registration is available via https://brutus.stager.co/shop/deathmoney.
The exhibition runs from Sunday 20 September to Sunday 20 December 2026. Brutus is open from Thursday to Sunday between 12:00 and 18:00. Current visitor information is available through https://brutus.nl/, while more about A/POLITICAL can be found at https://www.a-political.org/.
How to get there
Brutus Art Space is located in the Keile District in Rotterdam-West, near the Merwe-Vierhavens area and the Vierhavensstraat. The venue can be reached by bike from Delfshaven and the city centre, while Marconiplein offers nearby metro and tram connections.
