COLORS OF MONEY is an exhibition exploring the approaches, uses and understandings of money.

Based on the 73rd issue of COLORS Magazine, COLORS OF MONEY posits that “money is an illusion”, highlighting the myriad contradictions embodied in the allembracing role money has come to play in modern society.

Through photography, creative writing and art installations by Fabrica artists, COLORS OF MONEY provides an unorthodox insight into a world seizing from a growing financial crisis. The exhibition simultaneously underlines innovative response of social groups to the cultural dominance of finance.

In the spirit of the COLORS mantra, ‘a magazine about the rest of the world’, COLORS OF MONEY is a journey through the unexpected, diverse drifts of the monetary world.

 

Colors N°73

First it is touched once, then a hundred times, then a million - money bears the traces of those who have touched it.
For the making of issue 73, COLORS had money analyzed in a laboratory and found various substances.
Each section of the magazine corresponds to one of these substances.



Six of the original fifteen sections have been reproduced as part of this exhibition:

OIL

We all know that a lot of money is made out of oil. But what if a country is so rich in oil that the slick substance turns into a currency itself? This COLORS reportage highlights an unexpected barter between Cuba, which lacks oil but has plenty of doctors and Venezuela, abundant in oil but lacking doctors... Find out more about this uncanny exchange dubbed “Mission Miracle”.

SOIL

Played football and forgot to wash your hands? Well, then it is likely your bank notes may be a bit dirty... But on the remote island of Yap, Micronesia, soil is hardly something one gets rid of. On the contrary, as time passes one’s ‘soil wealth’ increases, and a bank may suddenly form on the ground beneath your feet...

METAL

Those of you who save some inherited gold in a hidden spot put your hands up.
Shelves? Trays? Under the mattress? COLORS takes you to former USSR and China’s Sichuan province, where many residents display an extravagant smile and the safest place to store your savings is in your mouth.

CELLULOSE

Technically, they’re called complementary currencies, but they usually have funnier names. Saber, Lets, Smile, Love and Fureai Kippu... Many communities around the world have decided to endow their populations with a unique local currency. COLORS takes you to the world of Ithaca, New York State, where since 1991 the local money has been “The Hour”, the oldest local currency system in the United States.

MICROBES

At first glance it is simply a bank. Customers are given accounts and a checkbook. In fact, Pentecost Island, Vanuatu, has a fully functioning, extensive banking system.
One minor detail is different: instead of coins or notes, the residents and banks alike use pig’s tusks as currency.
As the rest of the world suffers through the financial crisis, come with COLORS and learn how to really earn interest.

SWEAT

Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus asks what happens if we stop thinking of human beings as “one-dimensional” and give them the opportunity to be “excitingly multi-dimensional and indeed very colorful”. A tribute to the banker of the poor and the founder of Microcredit, this section is dedicated to those who improve their lot by the sweat of their own brow, and those who offer them the opportunity to do so.