Troika

In the summer of 2007, three artists from Slovenia legally changed their names to “Janez Janša”. They have claimed that it was not for artistic purposes but was an intimate, personal decision. Art curator and critic Domenico Quaranta takes them seriously, quoting Boris Groys: in today’s biopolitical age, life can be an art form. The three Janšas have gone beyond this, as they have canceled the border between art and life. Making life and art coincide has many consequences, for example in the Troika exhibition, by presenting their original and valid ID cards, passports and bank cards as artworks, they undermine the very concepts of “art” and “artwork”. These documents are ambiguous artifacts that challenge both economic and legal systems in their attempts to regulate our existence in the world, and the art system in its attempt to determine and protect the value of an art piece, while, in order to exist, they actively seek the complicity of both.