Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Sipho Mabona | The Plague


Mabona OrgamiIn his latest installation The Plague, Sipho Mabona materializes the hypnotic ambivalence of money: the quotidian dollar-bill which accomplishes our daily business begins folding in on itself, gains awesome complexity and takes flight as a foreboding swarm of monetary locusts.

Money has gone from being an elementary medium of exchange to being a means of exploitation: a colossal cloud of hot money [and incomprehensible financial instruments] buzzes above the global economy like a biblical swarm of locust. Thus money as bane. Yet money per se, plain as the one-dollar-bill, always retains its basic ability to function as a pragmatic unit of accounting for goods & services. Hence money as blessing.

Each single specimen was folded from an uncut square of (US) currency sheet and took Mabona 4 to 5 hours to complete.




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