Souvenir collective is an initiative by a group of artist that fuses both physical and virtual performance of artist and artwork

through a series of public interventions where paintings are sold as souvenirs and the creative activity is turned into a tourist attraction. New souvenirs are created using the photographs that are taken to the buying tourist with the piece they purchased and the artist. By following the dynamics of the tourist consumption and their modus operandi, the Souvenir Collective references global commercialization, homogenization and standardization of production while provoking and questioning the status quo of the artistic practice. These series of public interventions also challenge the concept of authenticity. By offering to the visitors an object produced at the visited location by means of the traditional art practice of painting, the act of representation, with all the symbolic charge associated to it, embodies and delivers a unique and remarkable experience to the tourist and gives these souvenirs a different status (that render between commercial product and artwork). But can an object, no matter its character (constructed status), really make an experience more exceptional and authentic? This project has also brought new understandings about ways to connect and interact with people as the exchange process, far for being only a commercial maneuver, has turned into a way to approach others in a more personal and intimate way. The Souvenir collective also aims to raise a discussion in relation to alternative economies and economic crisis by opting to sell paintings out of the conventional market and using informal strategies.