Enrique Figueredo
Dirty Money
I silkscreened hand-drawn currency from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and El Salvador on buffet napkins, back and front. I chose the colors from the color palette of the actual bills. I chose the specific countries based on research that said they are the fastest growing populations in Jamaica, Queens. While executing my project, I would quickly learn that is not true. It is impossible to stereotype or comprehend or control the diversity of Jamaica, Queens, or New York City for that matter. It is far too great. That was one of the best and most beautiful lessons that I learned during the project. I took the train to Jamaica Center from Crown Heights in Brooklyn with a bag full of napkins to give to street vendors and restaurant owners in Jamaica, Queens. This was not as easy as it seemed while planning my action. Sometimes there was a language barrier, sometimes confusion about the purpose, and sometimes a sense of urgency. I did like feeling that I was slowing down their hustle. Some customers did not want to participate in any way. I was successful with a few participants, the first being an icee vendor at the mouth of the 165th street promenade. I assumed she was from Latin America so I offered her El Salvador currency napkins to wrap her icees in for her customers. She had never seen the currency before but thought it was nice and agreed to help me with my project. I asked her where she was from and she said, “Soy Dominicana.” “Yo soy Venezolano,” I replied, and we began to chat. In the meantime she took some of my napkins and wrapped them around the icees she sold to her customers. Her customers would ask her what the napkins were, and she would point at me and say that they were my art project. Then we all began to chat. One customer informed me, “All the El Salvadorians left; they moved to Flushing.” I thanked them and decided to go find an El Salvadorian restaurant to test my new bit of information. I found one on Hillside Avenue and walked in still thinking that the participants would be thrilled to see their old currency, but it backfired. They did not recognize the currency at all but agreed to put it in bags for their to-go customers. “¿De dónde son ustedes?”, I asked. “Dominicanas, todos somos Dominicanos, we are everywhere!” She laughed. Why didn’t I print Dominican bills, I thought. I began to think that this entire project was somewhat stereotypical and a bit naïve and prejudiced in some inadvertent way, but I continued on my loop around Jamaica Avenue and Hillside Avenue. I walked up to a Halal cart, and I felt very uncomfortable handing him a Pakistani currency napkin to see if he would be interested in participating. Why didn’t I hand him the El Salvador napkin or the Jamaican napkin? My quest to confirm the data I found in my research was making me lose sight of the importance of the project; it was about conversation and not about matching the country to the person. The cook in the Halal was from Greece and complimented my Pakistani napkins while recognizing the man on the currency. “This is a rupee, and that’s Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the first President of Pakistan,” he said. He wrapped the next couple of kebabs in the napkins I gave him, but none of the customers said anything about them or asked any questions. I thought I would without fail find Bangladeshi people in a restaurant on Hillside Avenue that would be able to tell me about the currency that I had created. I did, and they immediately recognized the buildings I printed. “You made this?” A woman asked. “Yes”, I said. “What are these buildings?” “That’s Shaheed Minar, and that’s Curzon Hall.” At her restaurant she puts napkins in the complimentary plastic water cups that she serves with the food and agreed to swap her napkins with my napkins. I went back to the 165th street promenade to speak with a Jamaican store owner next to Jameco Exchange who expressed interest in my napkins when I had visited a week prior to consider the project. He was so thrilled by my representation of the Jamaican Dollar that we went around and showed it to other store owners on the promenade. A couple of them came back to the store and one of them asked for some of the Pakistani napkins. He was from India, but he really liked the drawing. I gave them the currencies of their choosing and we talked about all of them. The Jamaican store owner was selling fish and put the napkins in the bags for his customers but not before urging them to check out the napkin closely. I asked him if the Jamaican Dollar still exists in Jamaica or if they just used dollars and he exclaimed, “Of course it still exists!” I explained to him that the El Salvador Colón was already out of circulation and that pretty soon the Venezuelan Bolivar would be and that was the reason for my asking. We talked about the fish that he sells and about Jamaica, Queens, and I told him I’d be back to visit for sure, especially to eat at the Jamaican spot on the corner that sells Jerk Chicken sandwiches. All of the ideas I had about the project, how it would empower the participants, how it would spark political conversation, how it would be nostalgic for them, did not fully materialize. Perhaps they did and were not expressed at the time. But I did put smiles on faces and got to meet some nice people in Jamaica, Queens. I learned that you cannot stereotype such a diverse city and we should take advantage of the diversity and listen to each other’s stories. Perhaps someone took my art home and quietly asked his or her self some of those same questions that I have.
About the artist
My Name is Enrique Figueredo and I am a Venezuelan-American artist. I moonlight as a graphic designer. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela and immigrated to the United States of America in 1986 when I was 6 years old with my mother, father and my 7 and a half year old brother. My parents had made the decision to move to the United States illegally without jobs or family or friends to receive us. I have questioned and studied their decision all my life with great fascination. It is a decision that I believe many families make all over the world. I still question my parents’ decision to leave Caracas, and the decisions we made later as illegal immigrants living in the U.S. I have always had an obsession with Venezuela because I felt that I didn’t know her. I feel as though I am neither American nor am I Venezuelan. I have two passports. I live somewhere in between two cultures and I’m OK with that; in fact, it is the main source of the content for my art. I spend most of my free time trying to answer the biggest question of them all: why are Central and South America so fucked up? Then I am overwhelmed with so many questions about the world. Is Europe responsible for all the hardships of 3 continents? Or is it the church? Why would so many people have faith in a religion that destroyed all their ancestors? My interest in life and art is to answer these questions. I’m obsessed to somehow understand the ongoing drama of the Americas and then try to heal her and wake her up from this destructive spell. And if I can do that then I could try to understand the minds of humans.
Photos: Enrique Figueredo
Dirty Money
I silkscreened hand-drawn currency from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and El Salvador on buffet napkins, back and front. I chose the colors from the color palette of the actual bills. I chose the specific countries based on research that said they are the fastest growing populations in Jamaica, Queens. While executing my project, I would quickly learn that is not true. It is impossible to stereotype or comprehend or control the diversity of Jamaica, Queens, or New York City for that matter. It is far too great. That was one of the best and most beautiful lessons that I learned during the project. I took the train to Jamaica Center from Crown Heights in Brooklyn with a bag full of napkins to give to street vendors and restaurant owners in Jamaica, Queens. This was not as easy as it seemed while planning my action. Sometimes there was a language barrier, sometimes confusion about the purpose, and sometimes a sense of urgency. I did like feeling that I was slowing down their hustle. Some customers did not want to participate in any way. I was successful with a few participants, the first being an icee vendor at the mouth of the 165th street promenade. I assumed she was from Latin America so I offered her El Salvador currency napkins to wrap her icees in for her customers. She had never seen the currency before but thought it was nice and agreed to help me with my project. I asked her where she was from and she said, “Soy Dominicana.” “Yo soy Venezolano,” I replied, and we began to chat. In the meantime she took some of my napkins and wrapped them around the icees she sold to her customers. Her customers would ask her what the napkins were, and she would point at me and say that they were my art project. Then we all began to chat. One customer informed me, “All the El Salvadorians left; they moved to Flushing.” I thanked them and decided to go find an El Salvadorian restaurant to test my new bit of information. I found one on Hillside Avenue and walked in still thinking that the participants would be thrilled to see their old currency, but it backfired. They did not recognize the currency at all but agreed to put it in bags for their to-go customers. “¿De dónde son ustedes?”, I asked. “Dominicanas, todos somos Dominicanos, we are everywhere!” She laughed. Why didn’t I print Dominican bills, I thought. I began to think that this entire project was somewhat stereotypical and a bit naïve and prejudiced in some inadvertent way, but I continued on my loop around Jamaica Avenue and Hillside Avenue. I walked up to a Halal cart, and I felt very uncomfortable handing him a Pakistani currency napkin to see if he would be interested in participating. Why didn’t I hand him the El Salvador napkin or the Jamaican napkin? My quest to confirm the data I found in my research was making me lose sight of the importance of the project; it was about conversation and not about matching the country to the person. The cook in the Halal was from Greece and complimented my Pakistani napkins while recognizing the man on the currency. “This is a rupee, and that’s Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the first President of Pakistan,” he said. He wrapped the next couple of kebabs in the napkins I gave him, but none of the customers said anything about them or asked any questions. I thought I would without fail find Bangladeshi people in a restaurant on Hillside Avenue that would be able to tell me about the currency that I had created. I did, and they immediately recognized the buildings I printed. “You made this?” A woman asked. “Yes”, I said. “What are these buildings?” “That’s Shaheed Minar, and that’s Curzon Hall.” At her restaurant she puts napkins in the complimentary plastic water cups that she serves with the food and agreed to swap her napkins with my napkins. I went back to the 165th street promenade to speak with a Jamaican store owner next to Jameco Exchange who expressed interest in my napkins when I had visited a week prior to consider the project. He was so thrilled by my representation of the Jamaican Dollar that we went around and showed it to other store owners on the promenade. A couple of them came back to the store and one of them asked for some of the Pakistani napkins. He was from India, but he really liked the drawing. I gave them the currencies of their choosing and we talked about all of them. The Jamaican store owner was selling fish and put the napkins in the bags for his customers but not before urging them to check out the napkin closely. I asked him if the Jamaican Dollar still exists in Jamaica or if they just used dollars and he exclaimed, “Of course it still exists!” I explained to him that the El Salvador Colón was already out of circulation and that pretty soon the Venezuelan Bolivar would be and that was the reason for my asking. We talked about the fish that he sells and about Jamaica, Queens, and I told him I’d be back to visit for sure, especially to eat at the Jamaican spot on the corner that sells Jerk Chicken sandwiches. All of the ideas I had about the project, how it would empower the participants, how it would spark political conversation, how it would be nostalgic for them, did not fully materialize. Perhaps they did and were not expressed at the time. But I did put smiles on faces and got to meet some nice people in Jamaica, Queens. I learned that you cannot stereotype such a diverse city and we should take advantage of the diversity and listen to each other’s stories. Perhaps someone took my art home and quietly asked his or her self some of those same questions that I have.
About the artist
My Name is Enrique Figueredo and I am a Venezuelan-American artist. I moonlight as a graphic designer. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela and immigrated to the United States of America in 1986 when I was 6 years old with my mother, father and my 7 and a half year old brother. My parents had made the decision to move to the United States illegally without jobs or family or friends to receive us. I have questioned and studied their decision all my life with great fascination. It is a decision that I believe many families make all over the world. I still question my parents’ decision to leave Caracas, and the decisions we made later as illegal immigrants living in the U.S. I have always had an obsession with Venezuela because I felt that I didn’t know her. I feel as though I am neither American nor am I Venezuelan. I have two passports. I live somewhere in between two cultures and I’m OK with that; in fact, it is the main source of the content for my art. I spend most of my free time trying to answer the biggest question of them all: why are Central and South America so fucked up? Then I am overwhelmed with so many questions about the world. Is Europe responsible for all the hardships of 3 continents? Or is it the church? Why would so many people have faith in a religion that destroyed all their ancestors? My interest in life and art is to answer these questions. I’m obsessed to somehow understand the ongoing drama of the Americas and then try to heal her and wake her up from this destructive spell. And if I can do that then I could try to understand the minds of humans.
Photos: Enrique Figueredo
