¢urrēns is a body of work which juxtaposes today’s shifting economic climate with the origins of value systems and its connection with the environment in the form of video installation and sculpture. The name of the series, currēns, is the root word for currency, meaning in Latin “to run through”, the sense of flow or current. Sculptures house animations, whether as vessels holding monitors or as landscapes to be projection mapped upon. These research-based and satirical animations show objects, such as salt, gold, tulips, beads, and shells, moving cyclically through the landscape in a wonky and absurdist fashion. As today’s currency continues to move further from the tangible into intangible digital abstraction, this work questions what does society truly value and how to measure its importance.

GOLD: Journey to the Center
28” (W) x 70” (H) x 14” (D)
4-Channel Animation, Mixed-Media Monitor Vessel, and Raspberry Pi’s

GOLD: Journey to the Center is a surreal, cyclical journey of digging, collecting, and housing gold through a 4-channel video sculpture installation. The animation loops the American lore of 1849 gold mining to then depositing gold bars into the Federal Reserve of Manhattan. Resembling a fortress for entombed gold, the Gold Vault of the Federal Reserve protects the world’s largest known depository of gold - today valued at $360 billion and 98 percent foreign owned. Traveling deep under New York City, the animated installation reimagines the gold vault resting on the city’s bedrock and considers the American mythology of buried treasure. Animatronic figures sourced from 1849 photographs of gold diggers’ clothing, dig relentlessly underground for gold. In the animation, gold is cyclically brought up from the earth only to be returned underground again as bars in a vault. The sculpture media vessels act as an underground cave passageway as a form of stage for the gold to both be discovered and contained.

SALT JOURNEY : Salary
34” (W) x 24” (H) x 11” (D) and 44” (W) x 31” (H) x 17” (D)
2-Channel Animation Installation, Mixed-Media Monitor & Projection Mapping Vessels at

SALT JOURNEY: SALARY is part of a time-based multimedia project series, ¢urrēns, that explores the history of currency and its journey through the landscape. This work is inspired by how salt has been used as a form of currency (the root word for salary), its immeasurable value in terms of human survival, and journey to acquire deep within the earth... in this instance through a fabricated salt mine. 

Tulip Bubble
36” (W) x 29” (H) x 15” (D)
1-Channel Animation Installation, Mixed-Media Monitor Vessel
2019

COMING SOON:
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