RUIZHI LIU

©2025 R.LiU

02: Currency 2024

This project examines the decentralization of currency and its monopolization by states, banks, and algorithms in modern finance. Historically, currency derived value from communal consensus rather than state authority, yet it has been co-opted into centralized systems as a symbol of power. These systems dictate wealth flows and shape individual existence, normalizing dependence on banks, paper money, and digital currencies.

Using a Polaroid camera, I photographed portraits from global banknotes—figures representing state and financial power—and transferred these images onto seashells. Shells, once decentralized trading mediums whose value relied on mutual agreement, now become uncanny "currency." These hybrid objects are placed in wallets, ATMs, and cash registers, creating spatial dislocations that stage dialogues between primal exchange and modern finance. The work questions whether currency’s value must be defined by centralized institutions.

Shell money is one of the earliest forms of money in the history of mankind, referring to a monetary system that uses natural shells as a medium of exchange. The earliest physical evidence can be traced back to the Shang Dynasty in China (about 1600-1046 B.C.), and the word ‘shell’ has been recorded in the oracle bone inscriptions, and was gradually replaced by metal money during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods. However, this kind of money, which is a form of money that combines both natural attributes and social attributes, reflects the early exploration of human beings on the carriers of value, and its cultural genes are still influencing the development of the philosophy of money today.

By systematically archiving and arranging shells, their transactional function is suspended, turning them into visual archives. The project asks: If currency escapes state control and returns to human consensus, could its meaning be reinvented? In the liminal space between shells and banknotes, a new monetary form emerges—hovering between legality and illegitimacy, reality and virtuality—challenging centralized financial logic and probing possibilities for decentralized exchange.