Money Has No Smell

Money Has No Smell

Ignacio Gatica, Mariana Parisca, Gabriella Torres-Ferrer

Opening July 21, 2022 | 6–8pm

CUE Art Foundation (137 W 25th St, New York, NY)

Hours: Tues–Fri, 12–6pm and by appointment

Money Has No Smell is a group exhibition that presents works by three artists: Ignacio Gatica, Mariana Parisca, and Gabriella Torres-Ferrer. Curated by ACOMPI (Jack Radley and Constanza Valenzuela) and mentored by Rosario Güiraldes, the exhibition brings together recent works that trace flows of currency to and from the artists’ places of origin, in the process addressing the complexity of globalized and interdependent financial systems.

The phrase “money has no smell” suggests that our perception of capital can be untethered from and untainted by its source. Through a variety of media that utilizes both physical and digital representations of money, the works in the exhibition eschew easy understandings of its origin. They instead provoke a consideration of both systemic and intangible forces – neoliberalism, nationalism, colonialism – that iteratively (and often covertly) assign money value.

The three artists in Money Has No Smell render money – and the goods and services it buys – as a melange of ideologies discreetly manifested in our global systems, replete with insidious tendencies toward agglomeration of power, corporate greed, and political exploitation. Mariana Parisca’s woven altarpiece, wall safes, and lightboxes all hold remnants of the bolivar – a currency named after the 19th century Venezuelan leader – contrasting its material, economic, and subliminal values as the country experiences drastic inflation. Ignacio Gatica’s screen-based work subverts the sleek technology of the modern stock ticker and its endless scroll to warn of the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the economic disparities it has produced in Chile and across the globe. Gabriella Torrres-Ferrer’s living sculptures utilize the complex history of pineapple and plantain exports and the modern technology of cryptocurrency to explore the entanglements of trade, labor, and colonialism between Puerto Rico, the United States, and other international markets. Together, the works employ methodologies of withdrawal, exchange, abstraction, and transformation — actions that mirror the movement of capital itself.

Situated in the financial epicenter of the United States in the wake of compounded global crises, Money Has No Smell presents work that navigates borders, mines and extracts resources, and creates networks of exchange among the people and places affected by the seemingly untraceable impacts of worldwide financial systems. As catalogue essayist Meghana Karnik reflects, “Within this uneasy zeitgeist, these artists channel a sense of disillusionment and a search for spiritual meaning that bring us back to basic questions of what equality, prosperity, sovereignty, and interdependence might look like.”