"Evidence of Being" was initiated after I embarked upon a project to archive the objects accumulated over the course of my 30-year artistic career. The project discussed here not only represents the strategy of self-historicization, but also an investigation of the fraught and difficult politics connected to artistic practice in New York City. By looking historically at the practical conditions that artists face: high rents, limited space, the art market, gentrification, class warfare, gender bias, other kinds of discrimination and the market-based metrics of success, I found these objects became more than the surplus of my practice; they became a lens through which these issues could be explored.