Artist coin

2025

Metal

2.5 x 2.5 x 0.3 cm

“Artist Coin – An Experimental Journey” explores the paradox of currency as both a functional medium and a profound carrier of collective memory. By echoing the form of ancient Greek coins, this series elevates money from a mere economic tool to a narrative vessel, serving spiritual, political, and ceremonial roles beyond its transactional use. The term “fiat money” derives from the Latin fiat — “let it be done” — and reminds us that a coin’s value is sustained by collective belief. Likewise, our word “credit” comes from credere, “to trust.” In this project, I posit that art, like currency, depends on faith: faith in its ability to capture and convey stories across time.

On the obverse of each coin is my own portrait, rendered in classical relief, anchoring the work in personal identity. The reverse depicts the abandoned lighthouse that watched over my childhood by the sea—a beacon of guidance, memory, lost and hope. Together, these images embody the dual forces of self and environment, artist and context, much as a coin carries the imprint of its society.

Drawing inspiration from Joseph Addison’s The Adventures of a Shilling (1710), which traces a single coin through countless hands and lives, I invite this “Artist Coin” to circulate through the contemporary art market. Each exchange, each collector’s story, layers new meaning onto the coin’s surface, transforming it into a living archive of artistic valuation and human connection.

In an era dominated by intangible digital currencies that neglect the power of tangible memory, “Artist Coin” reinstates the coin as a “memory bank”—a miniature monument that records the ebb and flow of cultural and market forces. As these coins pass from hand to hand, they become more than objects of trade; they become storytellers, bearing witness to the ever-evolving journey of art, trust, and collective imagination.