Golden ship

This is one of the gold objects I made.

As a child, in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland,
I found a gold railway that led to a gold mine that was no longer in use. This exploration, full of naivety, innocence and adventure, with the historical documents I found at the time, was the direct initiation of the Gold Project.The economic crisis was the direct reason for the Gold Project.Many people started investing in gold to gain security. I thought a lot about the precarious position of the artist and turned it around: gold did not become an investment for me, but a source for research and the creation of new work and therefore of inestimable value.

Normally, a work of art is worth more than the material it is made of, I turn that around. With this project I investigate financial value in relation to the value of art. Gold is a natural material that is very important for our concept of value: it is considered to be stable in value, the price of gold determines the financial value of currency. I, on the other hand, investigate the artistic, symbolic, historical and spiritual meanings of gold.

Throughout the centuries, gold has not only been used in art because of its value, but also because of its visual qualities:

How it reflects the light sparklingly, seems to have depth, is hard and warm at the same time. Gold leaf is very vulnerable and soft because it is so thin, gold thread is flexible and light. With canvases, immersed in pure gold, the incidence of light ensures that the painting looks different every time from a different angle. I experiment with using gold in drawings, paintings and objects.

I delved into the infrastructure of gold through filmed conversations with Swiss bankers, a gold smuggler, traders and Henk Naarendorp, owner of the Nana Resource gold mine in Suriname. I saw with my own eyes how gold mining in the Surinamese jungle, carried out by incredibly hard-working but poor Garimpeiros, is at the expense of nature. Later, in my solo exhibition in the Kranenburgh museum in Bergen, I built a sluice box with which visitors could find gold.

What is the cultural significance of gold and what effect does the material have on us? Gold turns us all into magpies. Throwing away or giving away gold exposes our greed. I investigated this by scattering sheets of gold leaf in the snow, drawing on the hands of visitors in the Tot Zover museum and making a wall drawing with gold that was painted over. I wanted to put this greed, including my own, to the test. I did this with the performance Goudpak at documenta13 in Kassel. I asked the audience to embroider 24-carat gold thread, worth about €25,000, onto my clothing. In this way I tested the social control in the art world. I told people what the material was worth, to see if they could restrain themselves from stealing the gold. In the end, nothing was stolen, fortunately.

For the spiritual meaning of Gold I went to Thailand. With the Buddha statues covered in gold leaf, the spiritual value of gold exceeds its material value. In the past, real gold was used, which made it an exclusive ritual for the rich. A hundred years ago, the monks decided to opt for imitation gold, so that poor people could also participate in the ritual. Now it is about the spiritual value and no longer about the value of the gold.

The Gold Project led to dozens of new works, including drawings, performances, paintings, one gold gramophone record, the publication mi fen’na Gowtu and several films.