Teresa Estapé, don't let your eyes deceive you What does her installation hide?

View of the Teresa Estapé's work at the MACBA Collection: Prelude Poetic Intention exhibition, 2023. Photo: Miquel Coll

Teresa Estapé questions the value imposed by a market logic that has turned gold and paper – paper money – into symbolic elements and objects of desire beyond their material value. Estapé takes these two overvalued elements and subjects them to a reverse process, minimising their value by turning them into commodities different from that stipulated by the markets, thus putting them under cover (or refuge) from the impositions of capital. Valor refugi II  is a composition of standard white sheets displayed on a white wall. One hides an 18-carat gold sheet that has been intervened (camouflaged) by the artist under the appearance of a white sheet. On top of the layers of sheets and the intervened gold leaf, the artist has written a sentence without using ink: Show Me the Money. This slogan was popularized in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, at a time when capitalism – already failing – became global. We must recover the value of things, suggests Estapé, give them refuge to protect them from capital.