Cómo doblar tu dinero [How to Fold Your Money] (2010)
Origami sculpture
Variable dimensions
BA Collection
Inventory No.: 2010.472
This work began at the end of 2008 with the series of four photographs entitled Cuatro formas de doblar tu dinero [Four Ways of Folding Your Money]. At that time, the attention of international leaders was on the global economic crisis, as they sought solutions at the different Washington summits, where economic transparency was one of the main subjects of those speeches. The artist decided to take that premise to the world of art and he considered that the best way was to use money as material to prepare his origami sculptures.
These small items, typical of the Eastern tradition, allow a two-dimensional object to become a three-dimensional one. The banknotes that he uses have a value, but that does not only lie in their face value, but also in another; as by turning them into figures, the artist gives them value that goes beyond their function as a medium of exchange. That added value can be seen in two ways: on the one hand, as economic added value; and on the other hand, as what is known as emotional gains, by offering a reflection on how money can become a medium of meaning, emotion and form, beyond its purely material function.