The title poses a question that appears to belong to the art world: How much is my surname worth? For an emerging artist, the answer is often simple—very little. A name acquires value only through time, recognition and the trust of collectors.
Yet the question conceals a second, more unsettling meaning. In the digital age, our names, email addresses, phone numbers and personal data already possess an economic value (around $0.0005 each, according to research). They are collected, analysed, bought and sold, often without our full awareness, becoming commodities within an invisible marketplace where identity itself is transformed into a product.
The work explores this paradox: while the artist struggles to give symbolic and cultural value to a name through creative expression, that same name may already have a measurable market price in the data economy. It contrasts two radically different systems of value—one built through artistic research and human experience, the other generated through algorithms, profiling and commercial exploitation.
Ultimately, How Much Is My Surname Worth? invites the viewer to reflect on what truly defines the worth of an identity: the meaning we create, or the information others extract from us.
