133 Persons Paid to Have their Hair Dyed Blond

In the city of Venice there are a great number of illegal street vendors, most of them immigrants from different parts of the world: Senegalese, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and also Southern Italians. They were asked to agree to have their hair dyed blond and were paid 120,000 lire, some $60. The only condition being that their hair be naturally dark. The procedure was done in a collective manner behind the closed doors of a warehouse, situated in the Arsenale, during the opening of that year’s Venice Biennial. Although the number of people originally scheduled to take part in this operation was 200, it was finally reduced to 133 due to the arrival of immigrants in a staggered way, making it difficult to calculate with precision how many people had already entered the hall. It was then decided to shut down the entrance and calculate the number by informal count. This caused numerous problems at the door, due to the never ending flow of people leaving or entering.