LIMITED EDITION MDVANII T-SHIRT

In 2006-2007, the works of Swiss-based contemporary artists BillyBoy* and Lala were featured simultaneously in two major and world-famous museums of the city of Lausanne, Switzerland: the mudac (small case letter "m" is used to write the name which means Museum of Design and Contemporary Arts) and the Musée de l'Elysée (the world-famous photography museum). These two simultaneous "one-couple" show exhibitions, the first of it's kind in Lausanne, was named Mdvanii, ceci n'est pas une poupée ("Mdvanii, This is Not a Doll").

In the mudac museum exhibition the artworks shown featured Mdvanii and her friends in sculpture and installation form, as well as a series of BillyBoy* paintings inspired by his novel "Liquid Screen, in 19 Short Stories".

In the Musée de l'Elysée the photographic and pictural artworks were shown, including gigantic silkscreen paintings, a process taught personally to BillyBoy* by Andy Warhol himself. BillyBoy* and Lala consider this other aspect of their work as entirely independant from the sculptures themselves thus the reason two museums were required to show the body of the recent work.

The exhibition poster for which 11,000 were distributed throughout Switzerland on every bus stop and billboard in every major city, featured Mdvanii's iconic tight black dress, seamed stockings and fetishist high heel pumps. In the series of photographs this iconic image included fetishistic close-ups of Mdvanii's legs in these shoes which were then later used, in black and white, as a serigraphy for a limited-series of tee-shirts. The tee-shirts, which were made to be framed as artworks, also bear the stamps "THIS IS A WORK OF ART -BILLYBOY* & LALA" which is the cult phrase the artists' coined for their MDVANIIISM manifesto as well as "MDVANIIISM -BILLYBOY* & LALA". The limited-series was of 20 examples of the tee-shirt and only a few are owned by individuals to which BillyBoy* and Lala gifted them.