An artist’s book exploring identity, authority and self-construction through an ongoing performative project.
X=Y – i·den·ti·ties is an artist’s book by Austrian photographer Lukas Birk. Through a sustained performance, the work investigates the pervasive importance of identity and identification in everyday life. By adopting different personae and constructing the forms of identification needed to legitimise each of their existences, Birk tests how the notion of the individual is produced, recognised and maintained.
The identities we carry, together with the systems of authority behind them, are deeply embedded in daily life as indispensable structures, yet they can also become sources of exclusion, obstruction and serious disadvantage. In this work, Birk probes the boundaries and operational logic of such systems through forged documents, adopted truths and imagined lives created through self-portraiture. In doing so, the book examines how identity is not merely assigned, but fabricated, performed and regulated.
Second edition of 200 copies. Signed by the artist.
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Title: X=Y – i·den·ti·ties
Artist: Lukas Birk
Publisher: Fraglich Publishing, 2019
Format: Leather brown wallet cover with 6 ID cards
Size: 100 × 80 mm
Pages: 48
Language: n/a
Edition: Second edition of 200 copies, signed by the artist
