Found at tourist sites and in the vicinity of landmarks, a penny press works through a process of hand cranked pressure that flattens a penny and produces an elongated one with a newly embossed image. Currency is rendered void and a government instated image is superimposed with another – a place visited or event experienced.  
Variations in pressure, or a thought for your penny is an exercise of sorts, a souvenir in advance that predates place and event. 
It takes the penny press as a dissenting machine that attempts to interrupt a narrative and negotiate the relationship between citizen and economy, between site and figure, between person and thing.
 
Salwa Aleryani (b. Sana'a) is an artist currently living and working in Berlin. Through a constellation of objects and sculptures, her work engages in a kind of physicality that emerges from and as a gesture. 



www.salwaaleryani.com

Her fellowship is funded by Einstein Foundation Berlin (program to foster academic freedom).