OFSHORE, 2024.

In 2022, I applied for a Guggenheim fellowship for a project in which I proposed to launder money through art acquisition. I applied on a lark - I assumed that, after 15 years, I was on a slow path to quitting being an artist. I was struggling to balance my art practice and my day job, and I felt tired and alienated. I began to see my studio as a place where I made objects that, best case scenario, would serve as investment vehicles for the ultra wealthy. Somehow, I got the award. 

Since then, I’ve been teaching myself how to launder money through art on an international scale. I conducted interviews with lawyers, dealers, bankers, journalists, financial executives and artists. I traveled to the top four countries on the financial secrecy index: The Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and Switzerland (the US is the 4th country, and I was already there.) I visited Ugland House, a building in the Cayman Islands that is home to 18,857 corporate entities, and The Geneva Freeport, which houses billions of dollars in untaxed art. I went snorkeling and ate fondue. I learned how to set up an international corporate architecture to cover my tracks. I researched Swiss banking laws. I meditated on the well-established link between global art prices and income inequality, as well as the declining numbers of working-class artists. I purchased numerous lottery scratchers and won $25… (read more)