O’Hare: The Currency of Motion

At first glance, it resembles a map — lines, grids, and runways stretching outward like veins. But step closer, and you’ll see: this is O’Hare International Airport, not drawn in ink or paint, but built from something far more telling — fragments of money.

Shredded US dollars. Strips of old Deutsche Marks. Every sliver, every thread, once carried value, once passed through hands, once played its part in the global machinery of trade, work, and desire. Now, those same fragments are reassembled here, tracing the architecture of one of the busiest airports in the world — a place where lives cross paths in layovers and goodbyes, in departures and returns.

The gold lines glint like flight paths, or maybe like circuitry — the invisible systems that keep everything in motion. They guide the eye, suggesting momentum, rhythm, perhaps even destiny. Beneath them, the currency is not just material — it becomes metaphor. For how we measure movement. For what we sacrifice to connect. For the price of progress.

In this piece, the airport becomes a living symbol. A monument not to permanence, but to flow. A reminder that motion is its own kind of wealth — and that every journey, no matter how ordinary, is part of something vast, structured, and deeply human.