Erwin Wurm is known for creating sculptures that distort the relationship between the human body and familiar everyday objects. In performance-based events called One Minute Sculptures, he asks people to briefly hold or wear such things as fruit, furniture, and articles of clothing in ways that cause the participants to assume odd and humorous poses. The artist who swallowed the world when it was still a disc is a similarly absurd but more permanent work—a self-portrait in which the pale painted figure of Wurm, clad in quite ordinary clothing, takes on an unexpected dimension. The piece alludes to the ancient belief, held by several cultural and religious traditions, that the Earth was flat rather than spherical. Perhaps Wurm is pointing out an artist’s role in absorbing or “swallowing” popular, if limited, opinions and beliefs, “digesting” or re-thinking these viewpoints and social conventions, and finally proposing new and more expansive ideas in their place.