Trademarks,

1970

Vito Acconci was one of the first to experiment with performance art, in which the artist’s own body was treated like clay—a material to be manipulated, altered, posed, punished, and displayed. In Trademarks, Acconci established a task to execute and then performed it diligently, biting as many parts of his naked body as he could reach and documenting his self-mutilation with photographs and printer’s ink. Like much of his work, Trademarks seeks to breach the boundaries between inside and outside, private and public. The work is also intended as an astute, even humorous, commentary on the branding and marketing of artists and their labor.