Natasha Lelenco, Currency #218, 2024, Acrylic Painting

This piece, belonging to Natasha Lelenco's Exchange Currencies series, features a profile portrait of a woman on a circular wooden surface that emulates a coin. On the coin, the Maori phrase "kaore au e marama aroha mai" is written, which we could translate into English as "I don't understand, sorry". The piece is painted in acrylic using warm ochre and yellow tones and incorporates a small metal stud as a piercing and small marker pen marks that emulate street art or tattoos. Conceptually, the artwork is part of a project in which the artist, drawing from her own experience, explores the theme of foreignness and the sense of 'not being from here.' Furthermore, it connects with the experiences of others who have undergone the challenges of migration. These artworks are designed to function both individually and in multiple compositions, allowing for installations tailored to the space with as many artworks as desired. Natasha Lelenco, an artist of Moldovan origin, explores themes of foreignness and delves into the well-trodden subject of the value of art with this series. While conventional coins have a fixed value and typically depict a national figure, Natasha's coins showcase anonymous faces and offer variable, often arbitrary, selling values. This explains the variations in selling prices among the different works in the series, serving as a conceptual action reflecting on the arbitrariness regarding the value of people due to conditions of origin or inequality. If you stay tuned to the new releases, it also offers the occasional opportunity to acquire some pieces from the series at extraordinarily low selling prices. As an interesting curiosity, the artist offers her collectors the possibility to exchange the equivalent value of the percentage that would have been due to the artist from the sale of these coins for future works of her own creation. Therefore, beyond acquiring a wonderful piece of art, they acquire the opportunity to visit the artist's studio and consider the purchase of another work using this as a form of payment. Natasha Lelenco says of this project: "This series is about value and price. I propose to the public the acquisition of a currency as a transfer value only valid for future work of my authorship. This moving value, which has nothing to do with determining the value of the work itself (the currency itself), is decided, in addition to being completely arbitrary in nature, except for a reasoned valuation between the price of one currency and another. These currencies transfer the enhanced value of the artistic object for future work, deliberately leaving aside any symbolic overvaluation that derives from the creative work. However, each piece is a unique work elaborated with deliberate technical flaws, signed, and serves as a certification of original work. The norm is that the faces on currencies belong to kings, presidents of republics, or individuals who represent clear national identification. These currencies, by contrast, present a collection of anonymous profiles enveloped in disconcerting phrases that allude to the concept of a vast community of citizens who live in a state of 'not belonging,' characters who inhabit the depreciation that so often defines origins, laws, and inequality."