Recto Verso
Nina Støttrup Larsen
(2022)
Installation; 50 bank notes, mixed media and single-channel video 14:40 min.
The installation Recto Verso is an installation, consisting of banknotes, lightboxes, and a film, that is the result of a long-term research on the implications of the CFA Franc. The CFA Franc is a currency created by France in fourteen West and Central African colonies in 1945. To this day it remains the official currency and since 2001 the CFA Franc can be seen as a ‘sub-currency’ to the Euro, managed by the French Treasury as a proxy for the European Central Bank. The visuals on this neo-colonial currency are portraying recurring motifs of extraction sites and explicit French-owned assets in the region. Information about the currency is intentionally very scarce. Since the inauguration of the Euro, the eurozone has become directly complicit in the extractive monetary construction.