Abstract
This chapter explores the scholarship around Spanish artist Santiago Sierra to arrive at a working definition of neoliberal aesthetics. By discussing Sierra's body of work, particularly 250 cm Line Tattooed on 6 Paid People, in which Sierra paid six day laborers thirty dollars each to be tattooed in front of an art gallery audience in Cuba, the chapter argues that Sierra furthers concepts of whiteness as property and scientific management in contemporary art. Taking up the labor and material conditions as well as the financial and rhetorical forces surrounding Sierra's series, the chapter interrogates the managerial logics pivotal in the milieu of contemporary gallery art, and demonstrates the absolute limits of tradition of colonial aesthetics. The chapter argues that the avant-garde thesis concerning the idea of the artwork and the separation between the idea and object (subjects) must be entirely abandoned.