What happens when you take a parable from the Old Testament and turn it into a sculptural performance, sold in pieces online? The answer, of course, is MSCHF. The Brooklyn-based collective is once again making headlines with King Solomon’s Baby (2025), a work that quite literally slices through the boundary between conceptual art, provocation, and cultural critique.
The biblical episode MSCHF draws from is the one in which King Solomon proposes to cut a baby in half to settle a dispute between two women who both claim to be the mother. Faced with the threat of infanticide, one of them relinquishes her claim to save the child’s life. It’s in that act of selflessness that Solomon identifies the true mother. MSCHF takes this sacred image and hacks it—literally—recasting themselves as court jesters who turn tragedy into spectacle.
The project centers around a sculpture over 15 feet long, a monumentally scaled baby figure designed to be cut apart in front of a digital audience. Collectors will be able to buy a fraction of the piece online, and the more buyers there are, the more intricate the slicing becomes. The baby will be dissected with a hot wire during a two-day performance event, culminating on July 13 with a final exhibition of the remains during Second Sundays.
As always, MSCHF uses the mechanisms of the market and media to challenge them from within. Their practice is never just aesthetic—it’s a surgical intervention at the heart of contemporary culture. In this case, what’s being questioned is the value of art, the concept of ownership, the spectacle of tragedy, and the religious legacy embedded in our collective imagination. With MSCHF, there are no harmless gestures, and every provocation is a way of saying that nothing is sacred—not even a fifteen-foot baby.
