I Got Your Back

Topless. Now that I have your attention.

This is just nuts. The guy is renting out his back - no - he sold his back, like the back of his body, to an artist who tattooed it and now showcases the guy like an objectified piece of art, and the artist will eventually own his body long after he dies.

Dinner party conversation, discuss amongst yourselves.

The man who sold his back to an art dealer
BBC, 2016

The work, entitled TIM, sold for 150,000 euros (£130,000) to German art collector Rik Reinking in 2008, with Steiner receiving one third of the sum.
"My skin belongs to Rik Reinking now," he says. "My back is the canvas, I am the temporary frame."

As part of the deal, when Steiner dies his back is to be skinned, and the skin framed permanently, taking up a place in Reinking's personal art collection.

This practice is common in Japanese art history(?)

"As part of his contract, Steiner must exhibit the tattoo by sitting topless in a gallery at least three times a year.

His first exhibition took place in Zurich in June 2006 - when the tattoo was still a work-in-progress. When the 10th anniversary fell last year, he was in the middle of his longest-ever exhibition, a whole year at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart, Tasmania, working five hours a day, six days a week.

...
"I've been touched, blown on, screamed at, pushed and spat on, it's often been quite a circus," he says. "But I wasn't touched a single time on this trip, it's a miracle."
...
But he rejects the idea that this is performance art. "If the name Wim Delvoye was not attached to this tattoo, it would have no artistic relevance," he insists.
It is part of Delvoye's intention, though, to show the difference between a picture on the wall and a "living canvas" that changes over time.
"I can get fat, scarred, burned, anything," Steiner says. "It's the process of living. I've had two lower back operations."
...
"And one day TIM will just hang there. Beautiful."