‘Fear and Desire’ was the theme for the Lucca Biennale 2020-21.
Since the time human agrarian society stopped bartering and invented money - it has been our greatest desire. And its lack thereof, our greatest fear. Thus we have reduced our lives into chasing after something which is non-existent, whose value is a figment of our collective imaginations. We trade away our precious days, our thoughts and even our souls in the desire of this many headed hydra. We shudder with fear at the prospect that we may become ‘poor’ in this world if we do not relentlessly quest after this mirage. And even when we have it in our hands, it is never enough. Money makes us work as nothing else does. It plays on our worst fears, and casts deep shadows on all our endeavours. We do nothing without the objective of its pursuit, and while its lustrous lucre raises us to feverish pitches of ambition and rapture, when we lack it, we fall into abject despair and wretchedness. The installation uses currency facsimiles from all over the globe. The mirage of money and its complete hold on human civilization is the illusory promise of well-being, as we dance to its chilling tune, in fear and in desire. It plays us. We walk into this cloud in our youth and we never leave its embrace until we breathe our last. Money may or may not turn to dust. But as sure as the promise it bears, its acquisition and its embrace crushes our highest selves to dust.