EVERY PROMISE HAS A PRICE.

This i$ Amerika is a five-work investigation into the construction and commercialization of American identity. Developed between 2024 and 2025, the project examines how national symbols, collective ideals, childhood nostalgia and countercultural movements are absorbed into systems of value, branding and consumption.

The Color of Money

2024

The Color of Money serves as the conceptual starting point for the This i$ Amerika series. The work isolates one of America’s most widely circulated symbols—the dollar—and places it within the visual language of preservation, display and cultural legitimacy.

Two one-dollar bills are presented vertically inside a distressed, layered frame. Their familiar portraits and institutional markings remain visible, but a cascade of Tiffany Blue acrylic interrupts the upper note and flows downward across the currency. A coin embedded within the painted surface creates a further contradiction: money is simultaneously image, physical material and an object presented for contemplation.

The title challenges the green traditionally associated with American currency. Here, the “color of money” becomes Tiffany Blue—a color connected with luxury, exclusivity and manufactured desire. It makes the banknotes more visually seductive while partially obscuring the information that guarantees their monetary function.

Removed from circulation and incorporated into an artwork, the currency acquires a different kind of value. The traditional frame protects and elevates it, while its visibly aged construction contrasts with the institutional precision of the banknotes. Financial value gives way to a less stable system shaped by transformation, authorship, scarcity and collecting.

Created in 2024 and now held in a private collection, The Color of Money establishes the project’s central vocabulary: currency as material, luxury as interruption, and value as something constructed rather than inherent. The subsequent works expand this investigation toward national identity, architecture, nostalgia and counterculture.

Th1s i$ Amerika

2024

Th1s i$ Amerika expands the project’s investigation from monetary value toward the construction of national identity. A vintage 48-star American flag is positioned over newspapers collected by the artist during a visit to the United States, their headlines documenting the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The flag partially conceals the news while the surrounding pages remain visible at its edges. National symbolism and contemporary events occupy the same surface, suggesting that information is often understood through pre-existing ideas of patriotism, power and political allegiance. The flag becomes both an emblem and a screen through which reality is filtered.

Its fabric is pierced and torn, with a coin emerging from the damaged area like an object lodged inside a wound. This physical interruption connects national identity directly with economic power. What once represented collective unity appears vulnerable to the commercial systems operating through—and increasingly within—it.

The lower portion is saturated with Tiffany Blue acrylic, disrupting the flag’s familiar palette with a color associated with luxury and exclusivity. Suspended from a golden band, the flag begins to resemble an ornamental commodity rather than a banner of shared principles. Seduction and damage coexist within the same image.

Presented inside a frame constructed from reclaimed wood, Th1s i$ Amerika contrasts the rapid consumption of news, objects and political narratives with the act of preserving and revaluing discarded materials. The work asks what remains of national ideals when patriotism becomes a product, information becomes spectacle and truth itself acquires a market price.

Thi2 i$ Amerika

2025

Thi2 i$ Amerika continues the project’s examination of national identity, shifting its focus from media and currency toward architecture. A vintage 48-star American flag is placed at the centre of the composition, no longer hanging as a stable emblem but folding and collapsing around the structures beneath it.

The flag is pierced by a representation of the Empire State Building. From this point of impact, Tiffany Blue acrylic flows downward like blood, staining the fabric and the sculptural elements below. A colour associated with luxury and manufactured desire becomes evidence of injury, suggesting that economic aspiration can be both seductive and destructive.

Beneath the flag, an arrangement of angular wooden blocks forms a fragmented skyline of American skyscrapers. These buildings evoke the constructed power of capitalism: monuments created not only from steel and concrete, but from collective beliefs in progress, ambition and unlimited growth. The wounded flag rests upon the same structures that have benefited from—and helped commercialise—its image.

Unlike the flatter composition of Th1s i$ Amerika, this second work pushes outward into the viewer’s space. Flag, architecture and paint form an unstable assemblage in which no element can support itself independently. National symbolism appears trapped between the ideals it represents and the economic systems erected in its name.

Enclosed within a frame made from reclaimed wood, Thi2 i$ Amerika also introduces the possibility of reconstruction. Its materials carry traces of previous lives while being reorganised into a new structure. The work portrays a nation simultaneously wounded, dismantled and attempting to rebuild itself upon foundations that remain fractured.

$luto!

2025

$luto! transforms an original fiberglass carousel figure from the 1960s–70s into a monument to consumption, nostalgia and cultural identity. Once designed as an innocent children’s amusement, the stationary figure now occupies the space between familiar character, luxury object and economic fetish.

Approximately 150 genuine one-dollar bills have been individually applied across its body, converting currency into skin. Money is no longer simply represented—it physically envelops the object, replacing its original surface and assigning financial value to a figure previously associated with play and affection. The painstaking process contrasts the modest value of each bill with the excess created through accumulation.

The eyes are replaced with large black Swarovski crystals: seductive and reflective on the surface, yet opaque and lifeless within. A custom leather collar decorated with golden brass spikes introduces references to punk, BDSM and high fashion. These signs of rebellion become accessories, reflecting how resistance is repeatedly absorbed, domesticated and sold back as style.

The title combines multiple identities. It echoes Pluto, the familiar cartoon companion, while introducing the provocation of “slut” and the omnipresent dollar sign. Loyalty, innocence and desire become entangled with branding and exchange, transforming the character into a body offered to the marketplace.

Both celebration and eulogy, $luto! asks what happens when childhood memories, cultural icons and rebellious identities become commodities—and whether anything familiar can remain innocent once it has been assigned a price.

$k8

2025

$k8, the concluding work in the This i$ Amerika series, transforms a vintage fiberglass skateboard into an image of rebellion repackaged by consumer culture. Once associated with movement, independence and resistance to convention, the board is removed from use and presented as an object for contemplation.

Its surface is covered with one-dollar bills, creating a new skin of commodified identity. Currency follows the board’s worn form and retro proportions, turning an object designed for motion into a compact monument to economic value. What once carried the body through public space is now itself carried by the visual language of money.

A wash of Tiffany Blue acrylic interrupts the repeated pattern of the banknotes. Recurring throughout the series as a symbol of luxury, exclusivity and manufactured desire, the colour establishes a tension between skateboarding’s anti-establishment history and its later absorption into fashion, advertising and global commerce.

The skateboard remains recognisable, but its function has become uncertain. It can no longer operate freely without damaging the currency and painted surface that now define it. This loss of practical purpose reflects the wider transformation of counterculture: expressions of autonomy become protected images, desirable products and collectible signs of rebellion.

With $k8, the project completes its progression from monetary value to national identity, architecture, nostalgia and subculture. The American Dream is no longer simply represented by flags or skyscrapers—it continues moving through the objects and attitudes sold in its name. The work asks whether rebellion can retain its meaning once it becomes another surface available for purchase.