Means of Payment

Mixed materials
2024

Cover photo: Stephan Wölfle

These pieces explore the ambivalence of money as symbolic element and material object.

I began wrapping the money that I paid my dance teacher. Eventually this solidified as a payment ritual. Money, when wrapped that way, remained money—yet it became something more, and something less. My teacher told me that she found it difficult to unwrap the bills and thus she was forced to save the money. Just when she finally had the need to use it, unpacking those bills turned a ritual in itself—one that she performed in front of the bank employee, much to their amusement.

Between 2018 and 2020 new motifs emerged featuring different designs that explicitly referenced the body. A binding cord, inspired by shibari, transforms the bill into an embraced body. In one piece a Vitruvian man is bound at the center, serving as a commentary on the excess of discipline in ballet technique.