In 1969, desiring to express the moral turpitude of his society, Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles created a series of works called Árvore do dinheiro (Money Tree).<br><br>As part of the series, he initially created a display of one hundred one-cruzeiro notes placed on a pedestal. The work was put on sale at twenty times the value of the money. By juxtaposing the real and the symbolic he raised questions about the iconic versus the real value of the money. <br><br>A few years later, he expanded the project by adding Zero cruzeiro and Zero centavo. This time the value of the money was, in fact, zero. In order to underline his point, he supplanted the physiognomies normally depicted on banknotes with infamous figures, including, for instance, an inmate in a psychiatric hospital in Trinidad. <br><br>Almost ten years later, he created Zero dollars (1978–84) and Zero cents (1978–84). By linking the representation of a country through its iconic currency he provides an example of the confrontation between symbolism and substance, and whether the two can be contemplated as one. <br><br>Over time, Meireles created dozens of artworks with worthless currency in order to criticize his own totalitarian society that he found to be "unfair". <br>