Series:
Fiat

To pose the question of what gives value to institution-issued pieces of paper — money, Leung created the series of screen-prints on mall coupons, Fiat, to evoke viewers’ reflection on the insidiousness of the economic system. In Fiat, the artist fuses the design of modern dollar bills with traditional Chinese cardinal creatures. The fusion of the modern and the traditional in the artwork pushes viewers to reflect how people from both the past and present desired and laboured hard for sheets of paper that people in power mark as ‘valuable’. By manifesting the visuals of the artwork on mall coupons, the artist further collapses the two realms of capitalism and consumerism in the artwork to highlight how the two encompass all aspects of modern life.