Our Rightful Inheritance is a conceptual performance artwork that uses extreme valuation as a mirror to reflect and challenge the pervasive psychology of scarcity in modern culture.

This work is not an exchange for a product. It is a provocation that examines the internal limits, inherited fears, and value systems people absorb long before they consciously engage with money.

The piece invites viewers to observe the tension that emerges when cultural rules about worth and legitimacy are confronted by a number that defies expectation.

The Thesis of Scarcity

Every person receives a psychological inheritance that shapes their relationship to value. These inherited narratives include ideas about struggle, deservingness, ambition, and caution.

They often feel natural or inevitable because they are received long before they are examined.

This artwork serves as a public, symbolic confrontation with those narratives.

It highlights the emotional weight attached to finance and the mental boundaries that quietly define what many believe is possible for their lives.

The Price as Performance

The ten million dollar valuation is the central element of the performance.

It functions as the medium through which the work operates.

This number presses against inherited assumptions about what one is allowed to ask for, what seems legitimate, and what feels impossible.

The valuation is not tied to the material cost of the sculpture. Instead, it symbolizes the magnitude of the internal boundaries people carry.

The number is used to:

• challenge the collective comfort zone
• reveal inherited limits about what is acceptable
• question how value is constructed
• expose the psychological framework that surrounds money

By presenting a valuation of this scale outside the usual systems of pedigree or institutional approval, the performance makes visible the cultural rules that define worth.

The Artwork:

The Descended Inheritance

The physical work is a gold leaf box balanced on one of its edges, standing as if it has just landed from above and frozen in place.

The sculpture is a two and a half foot cube constructed with an internal steel frame and a weighted core that ensures complete stability.

Its tilted position captures the visual tension of descent, arrival, and interruption.

The form represents the inherited narratives that enter a person’s life before they are understood.

The gold surface acts as a field for projected meaning, allowing viewers to confront the values and fears they associate with worth, legitimacy, and possibility.

Its simplicity and presence place it within the lineage of contemporary minimalist and conceptual sculpture.

The Artwork and the Participant

This piece documents a turning point in the artist’s personal narrative, expressed publicly through conceptual performance.

The buyer becomes a cultural participant and a patron of thought provoking work.

Their involvement supports an exploration of inherited limitation and functions as a visible anchor in the larger dialogue the work initiates.

The artwork is not a religious request and does not promise prosperity. It is an act of performing reflection that places the cultural psychology of scarcity under examination and invites viewers to consider the boundaries they inherited.

Private Ownership

and Cultural Record

The collector receives full private ownership of the sculpture and may display or store it wherever they choose.

Their participation marks the moment the performance enters cultural record, and this moment will be documented through a formal museum event that records the transition of the work from conceptual proposal to historical artifact.

The museum event is strictly ceremonial documentation, not a transfer of custody.

After the event concludes, the sculpture belongs entirely to the collector, who becomes part of the provenance of the piece and is acknowledged in all future exhibitions, catalogs, and public discussions connected to the work.

ConceptuAl Completeness

Our Rightful Inheritance marks the beginning of a broader inquiry into how internal narratives of scarcity are formed and how they influence collective behavior. It creates a conceptual space for future reflections, installations, and discussions that examine inherited boundaries and the cultural frameworks that shape possibility. The work does not claim to transform individuals. It offers an opportunity to observe the inherited structures that influence how society interprets value, inviting viewers to consider how these boundaries are learned and how they may begin to shift. If the work remains unacquired, that outcome becomes part of the performance as well, revealing the extent to which inherited beliefs about legitimacy, scale, and worth shape collective behavior.