Birth Certificate for Carl Samuel Selavy

In a witty gesture to the interplay between art, life, and time-based mediums, conceptual artist Hans Haacke submitted a copy of his newborn son’s birth certificate to the controversial 1969 group show, “When Attitudes Become Form,” curated by Harald Szeemann in the Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland. Haacke, who characterized the birth of his son as a collaboration between him and his wife, marks the beginning of life as a work of art itself. The baby’s given name Sélavy refers to Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Sélavy, further confirming the conceptual nature of this “work.”