Island of Unhappiness: Artists Stand Up for Workers' Rights in Abu Dhabi

Over 130 international artists and arts professionals have threatened to boycott the planned $800 million, Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi unless conditions improve for the migrant workers at the site.

THE ART WORLD MAKES A STAND IN THE SAND

Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum, Akram Zaatari, Yto Barrada and Kader Attia are some of the well-known Middle Eastern artists who have signed the open letter dated March 16, 2011, to Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, demanding that the foundation "obtain contractual guarantees that will protect the rights of workers employed in the construction and maintenance of its new branch museum in Abu Dhabi."

Other well-known art world signatories include Janet Cardiff, Mel Chin, Andrea Fraser, Paul Graham, Hans Haacke, Thomas Hirschhorn, Alfredo Jaar, Barbara Kruger, Matt Mullican, Cornelia Parker, Paul Pfeiffer, Martha Rosler, Julia Scher and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

"Artists should not be asked to exhibit their work in buildings built on the backs of exploited workers," according to a public statement by the group. "Those working with bricks and mortar deserve the same kind of respect as those working with cameras and brushes."

Twelve times the size of its New York flagship, the sprawling 450,000-square-foot Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be the centerpiece of the city's planned $27-billion cultural hub and tourist destination on Saadiyat Island.

Currently a barren, 10.5-square-mile triangle of sand surrounded by a mangrove swamp about a third of a mile from the coast of the United Arab Emirates capital, Saadiyat is scheduled to open in September 2013. Other international spin-offs on the island include an NYU Abu Dhabi campus and a Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre Museum. The Guggenheim is slated for a 2015 opening.

THE ISLAND OF HAPPINESS: SO FAR, A MISNOMER

The word "saadiyat" means "happiness" in Arabic. But for the over 10,000 migrant workers -- mainly from the Southeast Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Thailand -- working on the so-called "Island of Happiness" is anything but.

On the official Saadiyat Island website, a news article dated April 20, 2010, states that Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), the public joint stock company managing the island's development for the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, "is committed to safeguarding the rights and welfare of its workers and actively upholds the high measures introduced by the UAE Government to protect workers, including in issues relating to health and safety, accommodation, insurance and payment of wages."

But according to a comprehensive, 80-page Human Rights Watch report issued on May 19, 2009, "the abuse of workers remains commonplace" and "reforms have failed to address the fundamental sources of worker exploitation -- employee-paid recruiting fees; visas controlled by employers; very low wages often far below what was promised workers in their home countries; and restrictions on organizing and no real access to legal remedies."

"UAE law prohibits employers from working with agencies that charge workers recruiting fees; but neither the UAE government or TDIC...and their international partners have acted to ensure compliance with the law and workers employed by the construction companies that are working on Saadiyat Island continue to bear this unlawful, unjust burden on their livelihood."

A CALL FOR MORE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

"Saadiyat's development will heighten awareness of Abu Dhabi's plans for economic diversification and will reinforce the perception of the capital city as a regional, and international, business and tourism hub," said Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, in a 2006 article on the UAE-based business news site Zawya.com.

But the increased media attention on the Human Rights Watch report due to the recent threat of an artist-led Guggenheim boycott is reinforcing a very different perception -- the lack of human rights in the UAE. In fact, the Gulf nation has not signed most of the international treaties covering human and labor rights, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and the Convention against Torture.

Noting that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that "every organ of society" has responsibilities in regard to human rights, the Human Rights Watch report states the  Guggenheim Museum, New York University and the French Museum Agency (responsible for the Louvre outpost) "have failed to take adequate steps to avoid the same abuses on their own workplaces" and urges these private sector actors to step up their level of corporate social responsibility by obtaining "enforceable guarantees from their UAE development partners that the construction of their facilities in Abu Dhabi -- whether bearing their name or actually run by them -- will not involve abuse of migrant workers."

It seems that in order to enforce the rights of workers on Saadiyat Island, the private sector may be the last hope. But so far in this unfolding drama, it appears that these companies are not being responsible actors. The artists who have made a stand in the sand should be commended for their action.

In The New York Times in November, Nicolai Ouroussoff asserted that both Qatar (whose I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art opened in 2008) and Abu Dhabi "are using architecture and art to reshape their national identities virtually overnight, and in the process to redeem the tarnished image of Arabs abroad while showing the way toward a modern society within the boundaries of Islam."

But if mistreating workers is part of this process, that redemption may turn out to be just a mirage in the desert.

image: scale model of Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (credit: Imre Solt, Wikimedia Commons)