Bodybills, 2013, performance and video installation,

Maintaining a focus on the multiply complicated trope of the self-portrait in "Body Bills" 2013, Gurs own self-portraiture is doubly subverted, becoming entangled with the mystified production of value in the opaque economy of the art world. Rather than producing her own drawings, Gur posed as a nude model at classes for aspiring art students who produce material for submission in their portfolios. Instead of receiving payment based on a fixed hourly rate, she asked for some of the works created during each session in return for her labor. The attribution of value to an art work became particularly pointed when Gur negotiated with students to collect her remuneration: the better the drawing, the more successful the overall artist portfolio, and thus the less likely the students were to give it away. This paradox teases out the existing models of value production in the art world: The nude model haggling with the artist, demanding recognition for her work, yet the model also assumes the role of the critic, basing her selections on an assessment of the quality of each drawing. She also becomes the barrier the artists must circumvent on the path to academization, which in turn, will have an effect on the value of their own work. And ultimately, by presenting the drawings as part of a video installation in a gallery, Gur reclaims the cognitive and immaterial labor of the action, slapping it with the label of authorship. Text by Hili Perlsohn, taken from the article Ways of making visible.

Above, produuction still from the performance.

Images as debt, 2013, mixed media.

We are absolutely delighted with the success of the campaign. This has been a great start for our new KunstHalle, Said the global head of art at the Deutsche bank. Under the theme MACHT KUNST (MAKE ART, but also POWER ART), a total of 2,135 artists submitted their works, People carrying their own artworks as a deposit while lining up for admission. I have decided to apply with one of my body bills- as a certificate given for actual wage labor. The Bodybill has been photographed as a proof and attached to a work agreement signed by myself and the Deutsche bank. It will be this agreement that I will hand to the bank as the competition takes place in the next year. It will be photographed and the picture attached again and so forth for numerous years. the demonstration picture that has been dated for 2017 (the year in which the debt will be redeemed, and the work will exist if either the bank or competition still exists.

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