The Art of Money Laundering

Beam Drop, Chris Burden , 2008, Inhotim

One of the ways big banks and global corporations launder their money and whitewash their history is through investing in ‘culture’ such as educational projects, art, and music, and if you visit the websites of companies like Vale or the Banco do Brasil, you could well imagine that they are are philanthropic organisations dedicated to the well-being of people and the planet. Drenched in utopian goodwill, it is as if they know that their financial speculations and economic activities are morally dubious and unethical. Skilled in the act of camouflage, the Banco do Brasil regularly hosts fantastic exhibitions, including Europeans like Chagall and the extraordinary photographic archive of the Afro-Brasilian artist Walter Firmo. The outside art museum Inhotim is a similar exercise in reputation management.  Funded by an array of mining companies and shady operators, the manicured tropical forest with its planned gardens, lakes, and bridges, frames the work of internationally famous artists. Beam Drop by the North American Chris Burden is a magnet for those like me who are drawn to big architectural sculpture. A re-enactment of a performance in the New York Art Park in 1984, a forty-five-metre-high crane jettisoned 71 steel beams into a vast concrete pit over a twelve-hour period. Momentarily, this sublime collision of industrial hardware with a  manufactured verdant landscape conceals the fact that a short distance beyond the perimeter of the park lie the catastrophic consequences of rapacious mining.