The picture of Manzoni signing a female body (Living sculptures, 1961) declaring her as a sculpture, refers to the historically telling of the male artist and the female model. Two pairs of words that are so combined that the opposite ‘male model’ and ‘female artist’ are linguistically marked terms. This constellation where the mystified model is ‘treated’ by a male artist to be presented as an object is drawing lines to the whole western history of arts. Women as objects for the male gaze. The woman body as a symbol for sexualism, vitalism, service; Function. Manzoni is questioning the body as an object. He is questioning the role of an artist and the ownership of the art the artist creates.
In 2021, 60 years after Manzoni’s act of body signing I, as a female artist, will ‘take back’ the ownership of my objectified female body by remaking the body signing act of Manzoni and in this case, both be the artist signing and the body being signed: Living artist (2021).
