Invited to take part in the group show "Soggetto/Soggetto", at the Castello di Rivoli, a Museum of Contemporary Art, I used this invitation as a chance to rehearse my disappearance from the art scene.
Instead of producing a new work, which would have ended up in some private collection, and sold a few years later to buy the work of the next hot artist, I organised a casting for my body double, somebody who would substitute for me for one year.
I was looking for a woman artist, who vaguely resembled me, willing to sign her works with my name, and take part in all the exhibitions I would be invited to. After placing ads in national and local newspapers, seven women turned up for the casting, which was filmed by Susanna Schoenberg, but eventually none of them accepted the job. Being a professional artist for the whole year wasn’t a very appealing prospect, once I briefed them on the nature of the job!
At this time contemporary artists had started to appear in tabloids and talk shows (the show included artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Vanessa Beecroft etc) and, thanks to their agents, marketing and PR companies, claimed a place in popular culture next to footballers and actors. My project intended to question the prevailing notion of authorship and the art system's reliance on a Romantic notion of the author as 'creative genius' to underpin and safeguard the economic value of art as a commodity.
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