The bodies of the performers are put to to extreme objectification. Not only embodying classic moments in Greek sculpture, portraiture and institutional critique, they also exhibits a pervasive element of social manipulation. While the employment of models has a history of unseen aggression – from Greek models catching pneumonia due to extended sittings in wet drapes, to fashion models collapsing on set due to extreme malnutrition and anorexia - Brottmann’s performers are employed to exhibit this violence. With contracts running anywhere between favours, personal debts and minimum wage contracts, these performers legally subject themselves to exert energy, inflict self-harm, and exhibit physical vulnerability. It is through these contracts that the complexity of Ida Brottmann’s work can be seen. Not only a comment on the canonical imagery of art, this piece exhibit the underlying conditions that have shaped western art history and continue to persist in contemporary society today. While imagery is used and reused, recycled into new forms and representations, so are the conditions applied to generate this work. By removing the intermediary medium and directly exhibiting her models, Brottmann exposes this sinister nature that underpins our history and cultural heritage; questioning the true price and value of the aesthetics we celebrate