You’d think minimalism and exhibitionism are mutually exclusive. Not so, at least when it comes to the budding body art of Shishaldin. This 22-year-old former tennis champion recently showed but two spare pieces at her recent show in Pratt’s Steuben Hall: a simple Powerpoint presentation of past work (mostly text) and a single vending machine featuring casts from her fellow students’ erect phalli.

This was her thesis show, and thus marks her departure from the academic world into the art world proper. What makes this passing interesting is not her subject matter—the old feminist standby of endurance, body image and cultural perceptions thereof, though she’d prefer not to hear it described as such—but her presentation. Though heralding from a tradition somewhere between performance artist and formal sculpture, her most successful pieces are her descriptions of her work, in the familiar form of the press release.

For instance, the following was recently posted to editors’ inboxes:

Artist Wills Remains to Guggenheim Museum

New York based artist Shishaldin has left her remains as a bequest to the Guggenheim Museum.

BROOKLYN, NY (PRWEB) March 15, 2004--It has been said that everyone loves you when you are dead, but New York artist Shishaldin has undertaken an unusual approach towards achieving artistic immortality. Under the terms of her will, her remains are being left to the Guggenheim Museum in New York with the stipulation that they are to be freeze dried and displayed nude in a prominent location.

Shishaldin goes on to quote herself in the third person, chiding: "The museums are like cemeteries, filled with art by dead people. This is actually a very conventional approach towards making art."

It’s a good gimmick, this. Especially as our young prankster is a bit shy. One has trouble imagining her flaunting the infamous and easily mocked performance art of the ‘80s ala Karen Finley or Annie Sprinkle. There is little that is confrontational about a press release nor the fresh-faced Shishaldin. Yet, by offering up such absurdist challenges and posting them in the public eye, her work is just as effective, and perhaps even more visible to the public as a whole. That she’s willing to go the whole nine yards is nice. (Her lawyer did make up the will, and an official notification was sent to the Guggenheim trustees.) Still, the prank is played, and whether anything actually comes of the challenge is ultimately a moot point. It’s a private kind of performance, with no audience and nothing other than documentation to prove its existence. And nothing necessarily has to happen at all.

The same is true of much of Shishaldin’s other work. She went on a high-fiber diet of Kashi to promote spiritual revelations, auctioned off her DNA on eBay, and subsisted on a regime of foreign-acquired lactation drugs so as to nurse herself with her own breast milk. That all three efforts failed (no visions were had, eBay deleted her auction, and the drugs just made her sick) is beside the point. In her world of artistic eclecticism, it’s the idea that counts.

In an art world where commerce truly is king, this idea is refreshing to say the least. At this year’s Armory Show, New York’s largest art fair, 43 million dollars worth of art was sold. Mind you, these are not big ticket Picassos or Impressionist masterpieces, but pieces by living, practicing artists. While this is promising for our economy, it’s a little scary for those that see art as something more introspective than a Prada suit. Shishaldin’s press releases, though still drenched in marketing and arguably juvenile, offer little in sellable goods and make for a media-savvy challenge against art as product.

Not all her events happen in private, however. Last year, Shishaldin ran the New York Marathon wearing a variety of luncheon meats pinned to her running gear. It was an homage to “berserkers”, those Viking warriors who wore animal skins to harness the beasts’ battle skills. Shishaldin hoped to tap into this supernatural tradition and the pocketbooks of the Norwegian Heritage Council for a follow-up performance in Oslo. “They said no,” she admits, “but I did run mile two with some guys sponsored by Hormel.”

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