The Albright-Knox’s latest special exhibition, Drawing: The Beginning of Everything, celebrates contemporary artists’ diverse approaches to the medium. Here on the blog, we’re taking a closer look at several artists featured in the exhibition.
To create Money, Milena Bonilla made 260 rubbings off the surfaces of coins from developing nations illustrated with plants or animals. She then used these drawings to create a series of “maps” where nations are not demarcated by territorial boundaries but, instead, are identified by the natural resources they have chosen to associate with monetary value. Bonilla’s decision to use coins conveys the threat that consumerist culture poses to our ecological resources. Hers is an imaginary world where nature rises above flags or territorial borders.