MERCA
I think its representation of the dollar has been more precise. Works of art make no sense until they pass through the filter of interpretation; from there, they circulate in language. It is in the process of this negotiation that they acquire the status of social currency. Works of art need the subtleties of contextualization and must be tested by a critical reception that seeks a certain degree of consensus. The dollar has often been represented through pop art. It has become yet another of many banal images, but in the context of Argentine socioeconomic history, it holds a predominant presence, and its meanings are local (or “glocal,” in the sense that many parts of the world that have experienced globalization know its traumatic effects). Over a decade, the Argentine peso lived the false dream of parity, artificially sustained by a government that stuffed its own pockets and those of its accomplices; and today, a country that once had a thriving, educated, and professional middle class has become a territory of rich and poor, with an economy dependent on tourism and a brazen and ignorant neo-colonialism from Spain.

The installation of the dollar bill, appropriately constructed with nails, is surrounded by an invasion of stray cats, which not only live among the waste but also fight fiercely for it. Today we can see echoes of those images in the collapse of the global economy. Argentina has known uncertainty for decades, and now neoliberal economics is undergoing a profound crisis. Mondongo’s vicious dollar, miraculously suspended in the air, is a dazzling symbol of massive failure.
—Kevin Power, 2010