Trademarks

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Vito Acconci’s conceptual performances, documented in photographs, began to focus on his own body in 1970. To create Trademarks, the artist sat naked in a gallery, leaving deep teeth marks in his own flesh. Acconci described his actions as “biting as much of my body as I can reach, turning on myself, turning in on myself.” He applied ink to the bite marks and made prints on paper. The provocative performance explored a variety of topics including pain, endurance, mutilation, the meaning of mark-making and branding. The artist has produced many versions of the documentation of the original performance. This 2004 print has a cinematic quality, describing parts of the performance frame-by-frame.

Keywords

Figure
Contemporary Art
Body Parts
Text in art
American
Black and White
Hand