Summary

With Gifting Exchange, I explored an alternative way of value exchange, and I began to explore the concept of ‘sharing economies and cultures’. Through a simple exchange, I hoped to revise the social habits of value exchange at an art fair. By becoming aware of what we sell, buy and consume, we are able to approach each other’s needs with more care and understanding.

Info

During a presentation at an art fair, the inherent aim is the selling (and hence commodification) of art. This is also the case in the wider context of the commercial artworld. At Unfair 2023, I aimed to explore an alternative means of value exchange. I transformed the space allotted to me into a participatory marketplace which focused on finding new modes of selling, exchanging and being with one another. By asking visitors of the fair to bring their cutest, funniest, most cherished object, we could determine in an attentive conversation whether their object should be exchanged with one of my cast plaster frames, or not.

In doing so, I began to explore the concept of ‘sharing economies and cultures’, aiming to create a shift towards a more sustainable consumption pattern. By becoming aware of what we sell, buy and consume, we are able to approach each other’s needs with more care and understanding. When sharing, two (or more) individuals avoid the transactional nature of barter or market driven economies activity that leaves a lingering indebtedness. Instead, we engage with feelings of commitment that might lead to residual feelings of friendship.

Through a simple exchange, I hoped to revise the social habits of value exchange at an art fair. When sharing becomes the epicentre of the practice of exchange, it resists a monetary value being placed on the artwork as a “commodity”. It seeks to understand what the interpersonal value of the consumer is at the moment of exchange instead. This proposed mode of exchange encourages imagination and enthusiasm. The benefits of the culture of sharing are across institutional boundaries. By creating a microsystem in the framework of my presentation Gifting Exchange at Unfair, I investigated in practice how a relational economy could work beyond the realm of the art market.

Many thanks to

Wood constructions: Gokay Atabek

Assistance fair: Shivani Gowda, Kes Lugt and Haeun Na

Graphic design: Szymon Hernik