Earlier this month, the artist Molly Crabapple—who has developed her own style of art-reportage for Vice, documenting her trips to places like Guantanamo Bay—dropped a major, 5,000-word essay, “Slaves of Happiness Island.” It documents firsthand her experience of visiting the construction site of Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates, home to future mammoth franchises of both the Guggenheim and the Louvre museums, and the subject of ongoing controversy about the conditions of migrant workers employed at the site.
The new Guggenheim is not yet under construction, meaning no actual museum building construction work is currently being carried out, as the museum has made clear, but the museum has faced a call by a group of international artists known as Gulf Labor to boycott the new space unless labor conditions on the island can be improved. The museum has also been facing guerrilla protests which have disrupted shows at its New York site. Crabapple’s firsthand report isn’t likely to do anything to ease such concerns, putting, as it does, a vivid human face on the labor issue.
more: Artleaks
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