Native blood artwork drawn from festival

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The Dark Mofo arts festival in Tasmania, Australia, after a backlash, canceled a project calling for blood donations from indigenous peoples.

Spanish artist Santiago Sierra planned to dip the British Union Jack flag “in the blood of his colonized territories,” said a call for donations earlier this month.

“We made a mistake and take full responsibility. The project is being canceled,” reads a message on Tuesday’s Dark Mofo Facebook page, signed by creative director Leigh Carmichael.

We apologize to all First Nations people for the damage that has been done. We are sorry.’

CNN has contacted Sierra for comment.

The project was “open to First Nations peoples from countries claimed by the British Empire at some point in history, living in Australia,” according to a call for donations posted to Facebook on March 19.

Artist Santiago Sierra is no stranger to controversy over his works.

Artist Santiago Sierra is no stranger to controversy over his works. Credit: Ballesteros / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

Those who volunteered to participate were asked to donate a “small amount of blood” to the artwork.

The project was quickly criticized on multiple platforms.

Kira Puru, an Australian musician of Māori descent, responded to Dark Mofo’s first Instagram post, “What a way to reveal that there are no First Nations people on your curatorial / advisory teams,” adding admits, “White people benefit even more from the literal blood of First Nations people.”

Writer Cass Lynch, a descendant of the Noongar people living in Western Australia, wrote a piece in Overland, an Australian radical literary magazine, saying it was “disrespectful and ignorant” to ask for blood donations.

The Noongar are Australian Aborigines who live in the South West of Australia.

“Asking First Nations people to donate blood to water a flag recreates, not criticism, the ghastly conditions of colonization,” Lynch wrote.

“It asks a community on whose blood this Australian colony is built, a community that is dying younger, sicker and more marginalized as a result of structural racism than anyone else, to make even more blood to make a statement that is not refers to returning or erecting errors. “

Lynch stressed that donors were not being offered payment, and Dark Mofo also made no mention of donations to indigenous organizations.

CNN has contacted Lynch for further comment.

Despite the criticism, Dark Mofo originally defended the project in a Facebook post on Monday.

“Self-expression is a fundamental human right and we support artists to create and present work regardless of their nationality or cultural background,” the post reads.

However, the next day, the festival announced the cancellation of the project. The rest of the festival will take place as scheduled from June 16-22 in Hobart, Tasmania.

Sierra is known for works that scandal the public, including transforming a former synagogue in Germany into a gas chamber and paying four women he described as “prostitutes” addicted to heroin to get their backs tattooed in a single horizontal line.

110 Mother and Child Divided (1993), Damien Hirst

Mother and Child (divided) (1993), Damien Hirst

There are art prizes and there is the Turner Prize, the enfant awful of awards for contemporary art.

Established in 1984, the Turner Prize was designed to stimulate discussion of art in Britain by celebrating each year’s most outstanding pieces by a British artist. Thirty years later, it is known both for its prestige and for sparking debate with polarizing nominations. (Damien Hirst’s winning ‘Mother and Child (split),’ a cow and calf split in half and emerging in formaldehyde, was a sensation in the tabloids.)

But the controversy surrounding certain works – whether nominated by Turner or not – says as much about the public as it does about the artists. Credit:

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

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