Description:Q3285

‘A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine. The court awards it, and the law doth give it.’ SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, 1600

A-FL’s ’78 kilograms’ (2020) is the first installment in an annual edition of postcards, titled ‘My Weight in Gold’. The phrase is a pun on the metaphoric idiom ‘worth its weight in gold’, which has its origin in the Roman Empire and first appeared in English by the early 1300s. For each edition, A-FL weighs himself, after which seeks out four objects of the same weight. Images of these objects, in this first installment ranging from a naval ammunition rig to ten cans of 3Coty Cat Food, are printed as postcards with the corresponding weight hot-foiled in gold onto them.

The four cards are collected in an envelope, with ‘312 kilograms’ rubber stamped in gold on its recto side; making up the total weight of the objects on the cards when added together.