FDIC Insured (2008-16) is a large-scale installation that memorializes the abstractions and utopian promises of global capitalism, which can never be fully understood or achieved under the frenetic flow of big data and deregulated markets. FDIC Insured is a collection of 527 castoff investment self-help books with the logos of failed banks burned onto their surfaces. The work combines the failed utopian promises of the discarded self-help books with the newly-vacated corporate logos, branding the collapsed futures promised by the physical objects with the visual identities of economic failure.
I first exhibited FDIC Insured in an abandoned office space near Wall Street, hosted by the Time Equities Art-in-Buildings Program. FDIC Insured has since been exhibited at The Mistake Room, Los Angeles; the Museum of Capitalism, Oakland; and Fotomuseum Winterthur; it has been written about in the Village Voice; the San Francisco Chronicle; Artnet the Brooklyn Rail; the New Yorker; Hyperallergic (twice!); Blouin Artinfo; the Art Newspaper; and Art in America, among others.