“There is a main concern in my work which is not politics or anthropology, economy or other kinds of big issues or techniques. The concern is art, poetics, soul, tradition, and language and my being within those terms. [The materials] are already impregnated by meanings, like shopping bags, banknotes, brochures, cigarette packs, and envelopes. My main approach to these materials is putting together what is shattered all over.”
–Jac Leirner

Jac Leirner’s sculpture Blue Phase is made from Brazilian banknotes that, due to hyperinflation, have lost their value. The contradiction of worthless money is important to the artist, and she often uses it to embody modern human interactions and the instability of systems such as economies.

In an article in Arts magazine (1990) titled “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Anna Chave argues that Minimalism is masculine in its aesthetics and intentions, condescending to audiences because it echoes authoritarian social powers. She notes that Minimalist artists created objects using common industrial and commercial materials, as well as limited types of geometric shapes. Doing so allowed the artists to associate themselves with the authority of industry and technology. This concept has been crucial to Minimalism from the beginning, as has the size and often the weight of their objects.

Jac Leirner was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1961, and continues to live and work there today. In 1981, she took her first independent trip out of Brazil, traveling to North America and Europe. After exposure to European and North American artists, Leirner became interested in sculpture and collage, and returned home to explore in depth the work of 20th-century Latin-American artists. Although many parallels exist between her work and that of other Latin American artists, she is careful to say that artists working abroad and in Brazil have influenced her equally.