Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade is best known for exploring time and natural systems through mind-bending sculptures that combine rocks, mirrors, and more. Anyone who attended the 2017 Venice Biennale and saw her sculpture Pars Pro Toto (2017), featuring 13 stone spheres that were reflected through pieces of glass, could not forget it. Similar works have been staged on the roof the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at biennials in Finland, India, and elsewhere.

In 2021, the artist turned her exploration of time inward—literally. For an exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie, Kwade printed the entirety of her genome on 259,025 sheets of A4 paper. Its title, Selbstportrait, hinted that she viewed this work as an image of herself.

Some 12,000 sheets were hung from floor to ceiling, and the rest were stored in copper containers. Visitors were also invited to take a page of her DNA sequencing home with them. With this installation, the artist was playing with what we understand to be unique when it comes to identity: she was showcasing her own genetic profile in bold text while also underscoring the fact that 99.9 percent of all human genetic makeup is identical.

Starting today, Kwade’s Selbstportrait has been reformatted for a new NFT project. She’s minted 10,361 NFTs—all come with a 25-page PDF filled with 300,000 letters of Kwade’s DNA code in A, C, G, and T—and she’s selling them for $300, or around 0.1 ETH, each. This new project pushes Selbstportrait’s themes even further, since every NFT is supposed to be a unique digital work, randomized at point of sale. Essentially, this means buyers are unable to choose a specific NFT within the collection corresponding to the artist’s DNA, as each token is distributed randomly.

To learn more about Kwade’s most personal physical artwork to date evolved into its current tokenized form, ARTnews spoke with the artist via email this week.

Some midweek continental capers were rounded off with the Europa & Conference Leagues last night, with British sides struggling across the board. At least we saw the opening night of the John Mossy Moss Farewell Tour up at the King Power.

Marcus, Andy and Jim also look ahead to the weekend's Barclays banter, as Eddie Howe's inspiring man-management might halt Liverpool's title tilt and Norwich could be relegated if Burnley's surge continues. All on today's Preview Show, sponsored by Betway!

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Doctor Strange is back and the Top Gun sequel is finally released

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Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning, which opened at Playwrights Horizons in 2019, continued to work on me long after I’d emerged from the theatre into the megawatted midtown Manhattan night. The play’s world—much like the white, rightwing, Catholic, intellectual milieu of Arbery’s upbringing in Bush-era Dallas—wasn’t something I’d seen onstage before. We meet Arbery’s cast of five characters seven years out from an education of Plato and archery at an ultra-strict religious college. They hunger for passion, touch, reason, the pain and vitality of others, and for one another. They are characters to be reckoned with, if kept at a careful distance. 

Arbery’s latest work, Corsicana, an excerpt of which appears in the Spring issue of The Paris Review, is a different kind of play, one that invites you in rather than takes you over. It is about gifts, the making of art, and, more poignantly, the sharing of it. Named for the town in Texas where the play is set, Corsicana opens in the home of Ginny, a woman in her midthirties with Down syndrome, and her slightly younger half brother, Christopher, who are grieving the recent death of their mother. Ginny has been feeling sad, depressed maybe, and Justice, a godmother figure to the siblings, introduces them to Lot, a musician and artist who uses discarded materials to create sculptures that he rarely shows anyone. Lot got a graduate degree in experimental mathematics, and, as he tells Christopher, succeeded in proving the existence of God, although he threw the proof away. “Art’s a better delivery system,” he says. 

Arbery’s dialogue has an unnerving way of being at once caustically funny and prophetic; perhaps it’s no surprise that he is much in demand as a writer for television and film. Earlier this month, I called him in London, where he was working as a consultant on season four of Succession, a series that I, from my sofa in Brooklyn, was struggling, without much success, to resist rewatching. 

We've just about recovered from Villarreal's disgraceful showing to get in for another Euro Ramble round-up. Imagine coming to Anfield and trying to keep it tight! PATHETIC.

Kate, Andy and Luke also look into Antonio Rudiger's confirmed departure from Chelsea, while Roy Keane casts admiring glances north of the border. There's also the small matter of the biggest game in West Ham's modern history and more Missouri brawls!

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How 1950s drama series Quatermass paved the way for Dr Who, The X Files and more

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