statement

My work is designed to inspire critical thinking about money, its effect on cultures and civilizations, and the way it is and has been deployed in contemporary and historical settings.  

 

Money can be used to build societies or to tear them down, for freedom or coercion, for survival or war.  But its broader implications are not always apparent in our daily lives. It's almost impossible to look at a piece of currency as anything else but a tool of acquisition, the means to satisfy needs and desires, for security, an account of one's status, a ledger of possibility. An artwork about money should shake us out of the moment, so that we can see what's written on the other side. 

​

Crucial features of any unit of money is that it contains information, the ease and velocity with which it can be exchanged, and the breadth of its circulation. Likewise, my approach to each piece begins with researching the specific currencies in a particular moment in time, and to execute concepts around them that that are provocative and challenging but not inscrutable, with techniques and media that can be spread quickly and widely to a global audience.  

​

Using actual currency is important to my process: having a physical thing from a particular time and place, for instance an actual US $100 bill which was printed in the same year that the US invaded Iraq (2003) creates a tangible connection between monetary and military policy. Therefore, and depiction of art in my work was something that in my hands. Many of the pieces begin with the burning or destruction of a piece of currency, as a way of casting it n the into the past. Just as we transition to some digital future, the relic is re-minted into something new and perhaps more valuable.

​