International monetary landscapes
Work : International monetary landscapes. Monetary lanscapes as a tribute to the poet Georges Hugnet. Collages on cardboard made from real banknotes, gold leaves, Various sizes.
Location : France, 2014 / 2015
Reference text :
As a child, I collected small foreign notes brought back from trips by my loved ones. Immersing myself in their careful contemplation was like going my own way. An immense universe opened up to me that I swore to explore later. In recent years, I have had the chance to do this as part of my artistic practice which notably addresses the global economic “crisis”. One of its first manifestations having been financial, the numismatic passion naturally caught up with me and I wanted to give a special place in my works to the banknote and its symbolic charge.
A singular visual object, its interest paradoxically lies in its exchange – fiduciary – value and not in its aesthetic qualities.
Its iconography is, however, extremely careful, to emphasize its precious character, but also to make it a vehicle of identity carrying ideologies. Here everything is perfectly ordered, reality is embellished, even frankly distorted. We most often oscillate between Epinal images and propaganda, which, again, is not the least of the paradoxes for small printed papers today teeming with anti-falsification devices,
I placed a lot of emphasis on the first aspect, the transactional, relational value of money in the installation: “Report” (accounting description of a world tour which summarizes the multiple travel encounters with commercial exchanges) proposed in 2011 at the Espace Vuitton extended all year round by the action: “I buy your friendship” (purchase of friends using bank notes made by me).
I also addressed monetary creation, financialization and the identity aspect attached to bank notes with the project: “Superadditum” carried out in Iceland.
With the series: “Global monetary landscape” I wanted to further explore the visual dimension of banknotes. Over time, this regains the upper hand over their “fiduciary” value in a slow process of “demonetization” which seems to accelerate with the crisis. The image, the decorative value of the note thus becoming exceptionally more important than its financial value (…)
I wanted to lose myself in the imaginary space offered by most of the tickets which offer meticulous viewers idyllic landscapes, imposing buildings and endless sunsets. I wanted to take a critical look at these utopian territories, closer to dreams than to reality, without forgetting the childish wonder that once gripped me in front of the profusion of exotic costumes, colors and finely crafted filigrees.
Using words once again, I started with expressions: monetary landscapes and global village from the jargon of economists and I brought them closer to the poet Georges Hugnet whose surrealist collages inspired me as much as his texts.
This ancestor, a user before the time of sampling and copy-paste, was also a great resistance fighter in the 1940s. Confronting it with the totalitarian image of the greatest megalomaniacal dictators on the planet displaying their effigies as so many unavoidable signs of their power over a currency and therefore over a people seemed all the more relevant to me…
Links :
Colère espagnole sur billets de banque