⟵   Mine Your own Business

Mine Your Own Business living sculptures series. Microcomputers, live data, tropical fruits, displays, wires and varying objeccts, dimensions variable.

Part of the ongoing Mine Your Own Business series, these networked contemporary still lifes bring fresh tropical fruits into contact with live data, from cryptocurrency mining and financial markets to global statistics, carbon trading, and the valuations of military and energy corporations alongside crude oil prices. Drawing on the still lifes of Puerto Rican Impressionist painter Francisco Oller, the works revisit tropical fruits as commodities shaped by colonial trade and extraction. As the fruits ripen and decay alongside fluctuating data, the sculptures cross-examine global dreams of technological progress, deregulated empowerment, and financial sovereignty—and what these promises mean for the so-called Global South—against the material infrastructures and unequal geopolitical relations on which they depend.

(Untitled) Tropical ?aradise, 2022, from the Mine Your Own Business living sculptures series. Coconuts, live cryptocurrency displays. Ideal overall dimensions: ~106 x 106 x 90 cm. Installation view, 'Give a Way' exhibition at Proxyco, New York.

(Untitled) Tropical ?aradise, is a 2022 artwork by artist Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, that consists of coconuts and microcomputers displaying real time data on cryptocurrency and decentralized technologies. The coconut got its name from the old Portuguese and Spanish word coco, meaning head or skull. Indigenous to Indo-Pacific Asia, the seed became dispersed and flourished around the tropical globe through voyages of trade, colonization and exploitation. Its endless usefulness made it a very desirable commodity both to those who live where it grows and to colonizers of all kinds; a symbol of everything idealized —better yet distorted— about the islands to Europeans.

(Untitled) Piñas, coladas., 2022, from the Mine Your Own Business living sculptures series. Pineapples, live cryptocurrency displays. Site specific install at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin. 72 x 24 x 18 in.

(Untitled) Piñas, coladas. is a 2022 artwork by artist Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, that consists of pineapples and microcomputers displaying real time data on cryptocurrency and decentralized technologies. Pineapples are indigenous to what is now known as the American tropics, and during the 16th century Western European colonization, the fruit was heavily desired and exoticised, turning into a prevalent symbol of power and wealth—and an early example of a global commodity. This was weighted by the connections to plantation slavery; the displacement and exploitation of local resources and millions of enslaved African and indigenous lives and indentured labour. The twist of the piece's title tries to distance itself a bit from the colonial drink as this tropical cliché—for the wealthy foreigner or the other's pleasure—and allude more to the colloquial use of the verb 'colado' (American Spanish), meaning to 'crash' a party uninvited, or to 'get in' but in a fugitive manner, inviting the viewer to question today's crashings on unwelcomed grounds and what are the material, historical, and societal realities behind.

Untitled (What a Crypton), 2022, from the Mine Your Own Business living sculptures series. Plantains, live cryptocurrency displays. Installation view with video projection, Kinzonzi exhibition at Acud Macht Neu, Berlin. 120 x 91 x 180 cm. Image: Chris Mukenge

Untitled (What a Crypton) consists of a plantain branch and microcomputers displaying real time data on cryptocurrency and decentralized technologies. The use of plantain speaks of displacement and exploitation, as well as connection and persistence; they reached the Americas and the Caribbean along the movement of enslaved African lives during the 16th century colonization, but unlike bananas, which became a global trade commodity, plantains flourished in ‘provision grounds’ as a very resourceful subsistence source for enslaved Africans and indentured labourers.

Untitled (What a Crypton), 2022, from the Mine Your Own Business living sculptures series. Plantains, live cryptocurrency displays. Excerpt of livestream installation at www.nmenos1.xyz

(Untitled) Still Alive..., 2023, from the series Mine Your Own Business. Coconuts, pineapple, manzano bananas, sugar cane, found objects, live data displays, wires, dimensions variable. Site specific install, 'notes on power' solo show at Embajada, San Juan. Images: Raquel Pérez Puig

(Untitled) Increasing Abstraction, 2026, from the Mine Your Own Business living-sculpture series. Coconuts, microcomputer, live financial data (military and energy corporation stock prices, Brent crude oil), display, wires. Dimensions variable. Images: Nina Sayuri Sato

In (Untitled) Increasing Abstraction, coconuts physically support a large display streaming live stock prices of military contractors Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Northrop Grumman, energy corporations ExxonMobil and Chevron, alongside Brent crude oil prices. Commodities shaped by histories of colonial trade and displacement, the coconuts become the literal infrastructure supporting financial abstractions of extraction, energy, and military production. As the fruits decay and market values continue to fluctuate, the work confronts the apparent precision of financial data with the material realities of territory, labor, resources, and conflict that these numbers obscure.