Katherine’s money dress events in Cambridge highlight issue of ecocide in the Venezuelan Amazon

Cambridge-based Katherine Hasegawa organised an art activism performance to raise awareness of the situation at the Orinoco mining arc in the Venezuelan Amazon.

A former Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) student, who studied international business management, she most recently delivered her ‘ARTivist’ message at the Fitzwilliam Musuem and the Cambridge Judge Business School.

In 2019 Katherine made a folkloric dress from Venezuelan bank notes to raise awareness of the economic crisis in her country.

Now Katherine, with the help of her friend Dr Michelle Darlington, head of knowledge transfer at Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation, has made another money dress to highlight ecocide in the Amazon, where illegal gold mines are violently displacing indigenous populations and causing deforestation.

Katherine, who is open to other collaborations, said: “The banknotes used to make the ‘ecocide money dress’ lost their value because of the mismanagement of my country’s resources by a small group of men who govern Venezuela. Just as these men have destroyed the economy of my country in less than two decades, if they are not stopped now, they will also succeed in destroying the green lungs of the world – the Amazon.”