Machiavelli
Machiavelli 2021 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 159.1 x 71.3 cm
100 000 Lira made out of the entire text from Machiavelli’s The Prince.
Machiavelli (detail)
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R100 Things Fall Apart
R100 Things Fall Apart 2021 Hand-woven archival ink-jet prints 189.5 x 89.9 cm
R100 made out of the entire text from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
R100 Things Fall Apart (detail)
detail
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
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
One Dollar 2011
One Dollar 2011 Map of Zimbabwean farming regions hand-woven with 300 trillion Zimbabwe dollars
82 x 89 cm
300 trillion Zimbabwe dollars represents the amount of Zimbabwe Dollars required to buy one US Dollar on the black market at the height of inflation in February 2009. The shredded bank notes in this work are Z$50 Billion Zimbabwean Special Agro (Agricultural) cheques. This currency was initially only intended for farmers, but it found its way into regular use because of the parallel functions with bearer cheques and the exponential rise of food prices.
