None Dollar Bills (2025)

None Dollar Bills imagines a seemingly absurd conclusion—but with the U.S. dollar having lost more than 85% of its purchasing power since 1971, is it really so absurd to contemplate a worthless dollar?

In 1971, the U.S. ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold, removing a key constraint on monetary expansion. Since then, the U.S. money supply has expanded dramatically, accompanied by a corresponding decline in the dollar’s value—its purchasing power.

Stacks of 100 two-sided ‘none dollar bills’ evoke familiar symbols of the U.S. dollar’s monetary authority remain, yet visually declare the dollar’s value dead: denominations reduced to zeros, George Washington rendered as a skull, and words such as NONE, NOTHING, and NADA occupying spaces once reserved for declarations of trust in the value of the dollar.

The work as presented asks audiences to confront the trajectory of an uncapped monetary supply and its implications for the dollar’s purchasing power, challenging them to consider: How much value must the U.S. dollar lose before your trust in it completely erodes with it? And when it does, what’s the alternative?

Selected, interpreted, and presented by Start with Sats Studio.