Hyperinflation: A cooperation with the Economy Museum

The exhibition presented Venezuelan bags, purses and figurines made from banknotes that had lost their monetary value through hyperinflation. These objects brought questions of economics, migration, craftsmanship and art into the everyday environment of SSE students and faculty.

Venezuela’s substantial oil reserves helped the country prosper during the 1960s and 1970s. Heavy dependence on oil production and exports, however, contributed to the neglect of industries such as agriculture and manufacturing. When oil prices fell, the country entered an increasingly unstable economic situation. From 2015, Venezuela experienced severe hyperinflation, while economic and social hardship forced millions of people to leave the country, many crossing the border into Colombia.

In this context, origami Venezolano became a way for displaced Venezuelans to earn a living. Banknotes that could no longer purchase everyday necessities were folded and woven into bags, purses and figurines, then sold in streets and markets, particularly to tourists. The objects are beautiful, but they also carry stories of poverty, displacement and involuntary migration.

Hyperinflation transforms more than prices. It changes how people understand value, trust and the purpose of money. In these objects, banknotes cease to function primarily as currency and become raw material. Their economic value has collapsed, yet careful craftsmanship gives them cultural, practical and even artistic value.

This shift—from money to material—places the exhibition between economics and art. It invites visitors to consider whether value belongs to an object itself, or whether it is created through social trust, human labour and the meanings people attach to it.

Hyperinflation is not simply high inflation. It is an economic crisis in which prices rise so rapidly that money can lose purchasing power from one day to the next. Ordinary decisions—when to buy food, how to save, whether wages will cover basic needs—become uncertain. The crisis can produce both winners and losers, but its consequences are often devastating for households and communities.

The Economy Museum’s exhibition Hyperinflation — involuntary millionaires and worthless money placed the Venezuelan objects within a longer history. It showed German emergency notes, a Russian “cheese coin” and a Hungarian banknote with the highest denomination ever issued: one hundred million billion pengő. Together, the objects demonstrated why confidence in currency and central banks matters.

The original Economy Museum exhibition was presented in Stockholm from April 15, 2021 to August 14, 2022. It explored why countries have experienced hyperinflation, how governments and central banks have attempted to end it, and how economic crisis changes everyday life.

The smaller presentation at SSE brought one part of that story—the Venezuelan banknote objects—into an academic environment. By placing them at the Center for Retailing, the collaboration connected monetary history with contemporary questions about consumption, migration, entrepreneurship, resilience and art.