Everyone knows that artists must endure their share of financial instability, but Sarah Meyohas has taken the profession’s ups and downs to a whole other level.
The Manhattan-based 24-year-old deployed her MFA from Yale, finance degree from Wharton and experience as a hedge funder to create paintings that reflect Wall Street’s gyrations. Over the course of eight days, for four hours per day, she sat at a clear table in Chelsea’s 303 Gallery and unleashed a trading account full of cash to move the markets of thinly traded stocks. As investments rose and dove, Meyohas executed minimalist line paintings to reflect the results.
“I lost in the low five figures,” Meyohas says, adding that small crowds of spectators, many from the financial world, witnessed her monetary shenanigans. “My moves must have confused whoever was on the other side of the trade. You can scare the market by pretending you know something that everyone else doesn’t.”
Meyohas, who previously made a splash by introducing a virtual currency called BitchCoin, which fluctuated in line with the valuations of her paintings, primarily focused on offerings with the potential to look interesting on paper. But in at least one instance something more romantic was at play. “I came across a small stock called Paradise and traded it because of the name,” says Meyohas.
And, while as a number of Meyohas’ pieces have been sold to those in the financial industry — one will hang in the office of an unnamed London firm — she looks beyond the lucre: “As an artist, I’m used to losing money.”