AKI INOMATA “Memory of Currency”
We visited the solo exhibition “Memory of Currency” by AKI INOMATA, a contemporary artist who creates her works through collaborations with animals.
The venue is MAHO KUBOTA GALLERY.
This exhibition, “Memory of Currency,” is an attempt to create “fossils of currency” by linking seashells — which were used as currency before the modern era — with today’s currencies.
Small nuclei carved into the likeness of figures who symbolize the currencies of various nations — Yukichi Fukuzawa, Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, and others — are inserted into pearl oysters, and as the nacre coats the surface of each nucleus, pearls in the shape of these figures come into being. The exhibition consists of works using these pearl oysters bearing the “pearlized” figures, together with video and photographic works that surround them.
Returning from a long trip, I exchanged money at the airport. The Japanese banknotes I hadn’t held for some time felt somehow nostalgic — and, oddly, as if they were “from an unimaginably long time ago.” Day by day, we hold archaeological artefacts in our hands. Amused by that fantasy, I let out a small laugh. Everyday payments are already largely handled by Suica and credit cards. The bills I had exchanged went on sleeping soundly in my long wallet for quite a while. Yukichi Fukuzawa was depicted on them.
I want to make fossils of currency.
That thought may have been triggered by that day when I crossed a border and exchanged money. I took the portrait drawn on the banknote and inserted it as the nucleus of a pearl oyster. Seashells have long been carved and used as ornaments, or as shell money in trade. Placing a banknote portrait inside a shell and returning it to the sea — this is at once an act of unearthing the history of currency and a self-reflection on the existence of biological species.The essence of currency is said to be transferable “trust.” Banknotes in particular, as one can see from the portraits symbolizing the state drawn on them, are built upon the credit of a nation. But how long this system will last, no one truly knows. The complex system that is currency may already be exceeding our understanding.
< In tribute to AKI INOMATA's solo exhibition >
Memory of Currency is also featured in her first artist book, “Significant Otherness: When Living Creatures and I Meet,” published in 2020. The project began in 2018.
With the emergence of electronic money and cryptocurrencies, the exhibition questioned the very notion of monetary value.
Please see the making-of video below.
