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For Prospects, Clémence Lollia Hilaire (1995) created Peppercorn (2026), a series of brass coins stamped ‘24 k’. The coins are spread across the fair floor and may be taken home by visitors. The work plays on a common reflex: the inclination to pick up a coin from the ground. This simple action becomes the point of departure for a broader reflection on how value is created and circulates. It refers to early colonial trade transactions in which gold was exchanged for brass under highly unequal conditions: transactions that were presented as mutual, but were in reality coerced and based on misvaluation.
The title names a legal fiction in contract law: a token or object of value that renders a contract binding, while the actual conditions remain concealed. By exhibiting the work precisely here, at a location that hosts both cultural events and an international defence fair, Hilaire presents art as such an object of exchange: an ethical front within an economy of militarization.
Written by Esther Darley