Valentina and Pieter invest in themselves

“Homo oeconomicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself […] being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings”.

— Foucault, the birth of Biopolitics.

Valentina and Pieter invest in themselves (2013) is a piece by Valentina Karga and Pieterjan Grandry in which they question the future of their own art practice. Inspired by Valentina’s mother who converted her life savings into gold, the dialog extends into the idea of self-investment and the act of transforming a golden coin into an art object, obeying in this way capitalism’s frantic mania to subsume everything, also aesthetics. With a relaxed and humorous attitude, the two artists give in to the exploitation which they put on display. The resulting coin is seen as an investment in the market value of the material as well as in its own artistic value.