Project
Filthy Fiat
Filthy Fiat is an art project by Coldie that transforms U.S. dollar bills he buried — and that were destroyed by mold — into a commentary on the fragility of fiat currency.
The buried box
In 2020, living in a wildfire-prone mountain town, Coldie buried a box that held two hundred one-dollar bills. Two years later he exhumed it to find the cash had become a solid brick of mold — unspendable.
He turned the mold-ruined bills into Filthy Fiat: each one a unique artifact created by mold, moisture, and time, used as a visual motif for the fragility and debasement of fiat currency. Those same buried bills became the facial features of the Christie’s piece Warren Buffett — Filthy Fiat — a duality of values between durable steel and magnetism and fragile money.
The currency as medium
Filthy Fiat reframes decay as material. The dollar — the most familiar symbol of stored value — is rendered worthless by the ground itself, then made permanent as art. What money loses, the work keeps.
