by Jazmin Taco

Since to financial collapse in 2009, Greece looks more like a Latin American country, with capital controls, foreign supervision and dilapidating infrastructure. Jazmin Taco’s video Sugar revolves around this process by parading a symbol of the Sucre, the national Ecuadorian currency, which was replaced by the dollar in 2000, after a devastating financial crisis. The similarities between Ecuador and Greece, Quito and Athens, do not stop in the financial crisis and the phasing out of their national currency. They share a troubled past of colonialism, corruption, occupation but also a long history and culture. Taco’s work goes beyond the economic domain and raises also tensions that concern gender, sexuality, race, and the role of culture in the situation of crisis. Money is in the background of all these issues, reducing the qualities of different social expressions in the absolute quantity of value.

*Thanks a lot to Georgios Papadopoulos , Alegia Papageorgiou , Alexandra Masmanidi for making this piece possible.