I have a strange tale for you today.

It involves the notion of being an artist and, I guess, that age-old question: what is art?

I find the whole 'being an artist” question quite an interesting one, though I don't mean the word 'artist” here as in someone who paints a nice watercolour of the Mount.

Anyone doing that is certainly an artist in the sense of painting something – and watercolours are notoriously more difficult that many imagine – but not necessarily in the more esoteric meaning of being a person who creates art.

Writers, musicians, painters and even chefs are called this. Artists. Even that orange-haired pathological liar currently helping destroy America had the nerve to call his fictional ghost-written apology of a biography The Art Of The Deal. Hmmm... Well, he can call it art but it's not exactly Michaelangelo.

It's a label that is hard to pin down, one that some folk happily embrace, one that others shy away from, usually out of some sort of embarrassment. It's long interested me that the great Richard O'Brien, who of all the Bay's songwriters would most likely have a claim to be 'an artist”, always declines the description. Instead, he claims to be 'craftsman”, a humble artisan toiling at his craft.

Being art

But what if, instead of being an artist, you were actually art?

This is one of several conundrums facing Tim Steiner. Tim is a former tattoo parlour owner from Zurich. He is also a work of art.

In 2006, Tim's girlfriend met Belgian artist Wim Delvoye. Delvoye was well know and not a little controversial due to previous works which involved tattooing pigs. He was looking for someone to be a human canvas for a new piece.

She called Tim and spontaneously he said: 'I'd like to do that.”

It's possible that Tim didn't immediately realise how much his life was about to change.

Two years later, after 40 hours of tattooing, the artwork covered his entire back: a Madonna crowned by a Mexican-style skull, with yellow rays emanating from her halo. There are swooping swallows, red and blue roses, and two Chinese-style koi carp, ridden by children, swimming past lotus flowers. Delvoye signed the work on the right hand side.

And when the tattoo was finished it was sold to a German curator and collector, Rik Reinking, for NZ$275,000. Tim got a third of the sale price. When he eventually dies, his skin will be removed and preserved as a canvas. Tim is now, in pretty much every sense of the word, a walking work of art.

Exhibiting

It sounds like a horror movie plot just waiting to happen. But that's not all Tim signed up for...

What's the point of a work of art if no one can see it? Art was created for people to view, whatever the ultra-rich with Dutch masterpieces stashed in temperature-controlled underground bunkers might think, and Wim Delvoye and Tim Steiner concur.

As part of his contract, Tim agreed to sit in galleries around the world three times a year, and for over a decade that's exactly what he's done. Currently he is contracted to the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania (Mona).

Since 2011 Tim has come to Mona for seasons that can last six months at a time. Since his current term began in November he has come to the gallery every day – except Tuesdays, when the gallery is shut – and sat on his plinth from 10am to 4.30pm. When Tim sits he doesn't move; he doesn't speak; he is lit from his lower neck to his waist, creating the impression of a headless tattooed torso.

Then on March 18, Mona closed its doors to visitors due to the coronavirus lockdown. The vast spaces stretched out silent and empty. But Tim continued to sit each day. He sat in stillness on his plinth in Mona for more than 3,500 hours.

Until April 30. Last week Tim's contract finished and the gallery was again deserted. The man whose flesh is a living work of art slipped away to be his own private exhibition.