Moneyball

Moneyball is the core of Echegaray Guevara’s work: real money, withdrawn from circulation and shredded, sealed inside spheres of Murano blown glass. The sphere — a figure of wholeness and perfection in almost every symbolic tradition — contains something that, once destroyed, is no longer worth anything. What remains is matter: paper fiber, ink, the trace of a collective agreement.

The series began to take shape around 2010 and was first shown in 2012. Each piece names an economy and a moment: the dollar, the Argentine peso against inflation, the euro and the 2015 Greek referendum, oil as the backing of the dollar, the demonetization of the rupee in India. Some works include screws and blood, as a reminder that behind every currency there is force, violence and bodies.

To produce it, the artist worked with central banks to gain access to destroyed banknotes: the Federal Reserve approved some two million dollars for the project, and the Reserve Bank of India shredded the crore of rupees in Demonetization.