MEIN KAPITAL (MY CAPITAL) is a series of abstract ink drawings on detached pages of Karl Marx’ book “Das Kapital" (Capital) The book pages are covered with geometrical ink-patterns which are based on the real shapes of coins. Anke Becker creates numerous money patterns by grouping single coins in always different arrangements. Covering the pages with money-patterns Marx’ book becomes literally unreadable. The text is complemented and covered by its very own theoretical subject: the money itself, materialized in the shape of the American dollar coins on the single book pages. In this way the content of Karl Marx’ text is going to be revaluated and reinterpreted.
Exhibition view, Galerie Maniere Noire, Berlin, 2015
“In MEIN KAPITAL by Anke Becker, the original authorship is literally struck with its own weapons, for Marx's reflections on the origin and meaning of money disappear almost completely under black ink circles, the basis of which is the outline drawing of the various dollar coins. The political and social structures of exploitation and oppression, which Marx exemplified in capitalist society's handling of money, experience their erasure or superimposition in the geometric money patterns that Anke Becker develops from the coin silhouettes and arranges in various formations on the text pages.” (Excerpt from a text by Ralf F. Hartmann) Complete text (German)
