SELLING MY LIFE / NOSTALGIA MARKET
Published on
September 19 – October 19, 2024
This installation blurs the lines between private sanctuary and public marketplace, inviting visitors to rediscover the gallery as a lived-in bedroom turned intimate archive of three decades of cultural memory spanning the 1980s through early 2000s. Ghuneim’s meticulously curated world presents rare posters, gold records, vintage fashion, skate decks, pulp magazines, and vinyls not just as artifacts, but as lived objects of obsessions collected from the pit, the floor, the afterparty, and the morning after. Every item is available for purchase, transforming nostalgia into currency and challenging audiences to reflect on the value of memory in an age of constant reinvention. By converting the most private of spaces into a public installation, SELLING MY LIFE asks viewers to consider: What is the value of a life lived through objects? What happens when sentimentality becomes currency? And who decides the price of memory? Mark Ghuneim is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of memory, identity, and culture through visual media and ephemera. His projects span film, exhibition curation, and media, including co-producing Pixies: Gouge (BBC, 2001) and co-curating Public, Private, Secret at the International Center of Photography (2016–2017). A pioneer in surveillance discourse, Ghuneim collaborated with the NYCLU in the 1990s to map New York City’s cameras and later developed the Surveillance Index. He began his career as a pioneering VJ in New York’s club scene, producing visuals for MTV’s 120 Minutes, and went on to hold senior executive roles at the intersection of music and technology. SELLING MY LIFE is his most ambitious and personal project to date—an immersive act of autobiography, performance, and marketplace. A portion of proceeds will be donated to MusiCares, a 501(c)3 that helps the humans behind music because music gives so much to the world. Offering preventive, emergency, and recovery programs, MusiCares is a safety net supporting the health and welfare of the music community.