Zero Dollar

During Brazil’s military dictatorship of 1964–85, Cildo Meireles used preexisting systems of circulation to critique symbols of national identity and disseminate subversive messages while evading censorship. Here he printed his own “worthless” money, stripping away its exchange value to reveal its symbolic value. For “Zero Dollar,” he replaced former presidents with Uncle Sam, recognizable everywhere as a patriotic, patriarchal, and patronizing symbol of the United States. On the reverse is Fort Knox, a reference to the U.S. government’s role in setting the value of currency and its power in the global economy.