The artist’s special card plates take the form of identification issued by a fictional country

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has collaborated with Hyundai Card on a credit card design project that places his visual language inside an everyday payment object.

Hyundai Card unveiled “Hyundai Card Maurizio Cattelan” on Sept. 15. It is the company’s second Artist Special Plate project, following a collaboration with Tom Sachs in 2025.

“A painting stays in one place and waits for you, but a credit card goes everywhere with you,” Cattelan said in explaining the project. He focused on the card’s movement through restaurants, hotels, shops and travel rather than its position as a fixed object.

Cattelan recast the credit card as identification issued by the fictional “Republic of Hyundai Card.” The designs are based on two official formats: a national identification card and a driver’s licence.

Each plate carries a fictional national emblem developed from the Hyundai Card logo. The banana associated with Cattelan’s “Comedian” appears as a holographic pattern, while the reverse of the driver’s licence design replaces conventional vehicles with a horse, ostrich and elephant.

Cardholders may use their own portrait or select one of six AI-generated characters collectively named “CATT.” The characters were developed from Cattelan’s “Untitled,” which depicts a figure emerging through a hole in a museum floor.

The design is not a separate credit card product. Existing Hyundai Card members can request it as an additional plate. The issuance fee is 10,000 won for a design using a CATT character and 30,000 won for one featuring the cardholder’s own photograph.

Cattelan previously presented the large-scale solo exhibition “WE” at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul in 2023. Hyundai Card also hosted “TOILETPAPER: The Studio,” an exhibition by the creative studio founded by Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, at Hyundai Card Storage in 2021.

The artist arrived in Seoul on Sept. 14 for the card project. His exhibition “NIGHT,” the first major solo presentation of his work in Germany, opened at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie on Sept. 10 and runs through March 7, 2027.

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