Heart of Darkness Dollar
Heart of Darkness 2021 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 176 x 76 cm
US$1 made out of the entire text from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Heart of Darkness Dollar (detail)
detail
Archive
Z$100 Billion Animal Farm
Animal Farm Agro-Cheque 2021 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 141.5 x 76 cm
Z$100 Billion Agro Cheque made out of the entire text from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
As the economic crisis in Zimbabwe began to escalate in the early 2000s the government clamped down on the freedom of press leading to the bombing of The Daily Mail in 2001. As a response the paper published Animal Farm in daily instalments. (see: https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/mail-guardian/20170203/281861528235847)
With the resulting hyperinflation the government kept printing ever-larger denominations of banknotes. In 2008 they released large denomination Special Agro (Agricultural) Cheques for farmers. With the exponential rise in food prices, these Agro Cheques made their way into general circulation. The Z$100 Billion Agro Cheque was the largest note in the second series of the Zimbabwean Dollar. It shared the record for the most number of zeroes depicted on a banknote with the Yugoslav 500 Billion Dinar note of 1993, up until 2009 when Zimbabwe issued even larger denominations.
Z$100 Billion Animal Farm (detail)
detail
Zimbabwean flag with OBEY or YEBO
Zimbabwean flag with OBEY or YEBO
OBEY YEBO flag 2021 flag fabric 1m x 2m
This work was shown at the 2021 Gangwon Triennial in South Korea.
installation at the Gangwon Triennale 2021
The DNA of the Social Contract 2021 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 166 x 90 cm
I began working with the idea of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau during a Pro Helvetia residency in Switzerland in 2018. This contract outlines how we as individual citizens have consented to surrender some freedoms to our governments in exchange for the protection of our remaining rights. This is not something we are usually asked and it is normally implicit in the status quo.
At the time I was impressed by how well this contract seemed to work in Switzerland as opposed to places like Zimbabwe where I was born and grew up.
While a social contract does exist in Zimbabwe, it feels broken in comparison with how efficiently it seems to work in Switzerland. This is undoubtedly due to the apartheid-type history Zimbabwe suffered prior to its independence. The social contract was never fair to the majority of Zimbabweans and so there was never much faith in it.
Then during the recent lockdowns the idea of The Social Contract seemed pertinent again. In many countries it been renewed after having been slowly rolled back over time. Here in South Africa we saw the army on the streets as the government implemented draconian measures to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile countries like Sweden had such faith in its social contract that it avoided a lockdown in 2020 altogether.
In the lockdown I also learnt about DNA while researching the genetic sequence of the coronavirus. DNA is represented by the letters a,c,g and t. The strands of these letters form the blueprint of life. By highlighting these letters in a body of text such as The Social Contract, I am in a way ‘revealing its DNA’. Both Laurie Anderson and William S Burroughs have pointed out that language is a virus and by extension so are ideas.
The social contract that I have made is coiled like a strand of DNA but it is also unraveling.
The DNA of The Social Contract (detail 1)
detail
Coronavirus MT324062 2020
Coronavirus MT324062 2020 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 64 x 90 cm
Coronavirus MT324062 detail
detail
coronavirus MT324062 drawing 2020
Coronavirus MT324062 Lockdown Drawing 2020 Pencil crayons on acid-free paper
Language and local turns of phrase have always been an inspiration for my work. During this current crisis the genetic code of the coronavirus has been sequenced in record time in order to help create a vaccine. Coated in lipids and with a protein crown to gain access to our cells, this 30 000 odd string of letters are the instructions for our cells to reproduce this virus. As the virus travels small mutations in this code occur allowing scientists to track its spread. I have been looking at this language of the virus and in particular the first South African version to be sequenced: MT324062 https://www.ncbi.nlm.
Z$100 Billion Agro-cheque 2020
Z$100 Billion Agro-cheque 2020 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 83 x 164 cm
The Reserve Bank issued Special Agro (Agricultural) cheques from 15 May to 31 July 2008. Although of a different design and with the intention for use only by farmers, it had found its way into regular use because of the parallel functions with bearer Cheques and the exponential rise of food prices. Following the 2008 currency reform, Agro and bearer cheques were phased out on 1 January 2009.
The Communist Manifesto 2020
The Communist Manifesto 2020 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 150 x 77 cm
100 RMB made out of the entire text from The Communist Manifesto.
The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels is one of the world’s most influential political documents. It looks analytically at the class struggle and at capitalism. It does not however predict the future forms that communism would take.
The current form of communism practiced in China has evolved since Mao’s time. It now has what is called a socialist market economy (Socialism with Chinese Characteristics) and it embraces many forms of capitalism.
China has also been the world’s fastest growing economy for some time and it looks as if it could be on its way to take over from the US as the world’s dominant superpower.
I think that this Chinese 100 RMB note made out The Communist Manifesto sums up this story visually.
The Communist Manifest (detail)
detail
The Wretched of The Earth 2020
The Wretched of the Earth 2020 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints with the entire text from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth 201 × 194.5 × 10 cm
Wretched of the Earth (detail)
detail
Z$4,358,055 2019
Z$4,358,055 2019 Map of Zimbabwean farming regions hand-woven with a progression of shredded Zimbabwean bank notes that amount to Z$4,358,055. 82 x 89 cm
This map shows the different farming regions in Zimbabwe and has been woven with now worthless amounts of Zimbabwean currency. This amount forms a coded message as certain numbers can be read as letters in the alphabet using some imagination.
This is designed to evade the censorship of communications critical of the government. In this case the numbers can be interpreted as reading YES BOSS.
image by Janelle Low
