Representing finance in the arts

Image: (c) Nathan Dumlao (@nate_dumlao)

Literature, cinema and the performing and visual arts represent financial worlds and financial systems; they capture moments of financial change, uncertainty and crisis; and they display the relationships between finance and other domains. In so doing they help to shape ways of inhabiting financial systems, as well as critiques and evaluations of financial systems. Literary representations of finance can uncover the complexities and tensions within financial systems, and the multiplicity of voices and perspectives on how finance works. Artistic engagements and representations bring to the fore the emotional ‘investments’ that individuals and societies have in money and finance.  

How can artistic engagements with finance across a wide historical range help us understand the changing shape and scope of finance in the twenty-first century? What place might the arts have in the development of finance, and in promoting the understanding and critique of financial systems and practices?