Karina Granieri, a young visual artist who has presented her work individually and as part of the art collective Taller Popular de Serigrafía (Popular Silkscreen Workshop), designed the action Un dolor (which can be loosely translated as "One Pain") as "a provocation" to call attention to"people's destructive relationship with foreign currency."

After a verbal lapsus (she intended to say "un dólar" and instead said "un dolor"), Granieri created a replica of a one dollar bill, changing its nomination to UN DOLOR and altering the expression of George Washington's eyes and lips. Portrayed on the bill, Washington's distress mirrored the tension triggered by the government's decision to get out of the convertibility plan. The bill embodied the collective feeling of uncertainty experienced by those who benefited from ten years of fixed parity between the dollar and the peso.

For her action, Granieri printed three thousand bills and, over the course of two sessions of three hours each, she distributed the dolores amongst those stationed in front of money exchange bureaus in downtown Buenos Aires. Granieri's action prompted an ironic collective mourning of sorts, in which people grieved the loss of the privileges, such as access to international travel and imports, facilitated by the convertibility plan. By distributing the dolores (circulating the pain), Granieri intervened the peculiar social configuration of standing in line, where the public juxtaposes with the private space of the waiting.

The action provoked a cathartic effect and ignited dialogue amongst those buying dollars. The participants reflected about issues of being dependent from an outside sovereign entity—the "almighty" dollar—and also about the now visible consequences of the Cavallo plan. Cavallo's convertibility plan had made it possible for middle class Argentineans to realize many of their dreams while it simultaneously devastated the poor. Remarkably, both affected sectors were in line the day of the Dolor action: those who had the money to buy the dollars, and the young unemployed who sold labor—their time availability—reserving places in line for those who did not want to stand there for hours. In a speculative economy where nothing is produced, their way of laboring was using their bodies as place- holders in the dead time that preceded the actual exchange of pesos for dollars. According to Granieri, it was them, the unemployed, who engaged her action with humor and enjoyed it the most.

Everybody wanted to get a dolor: it is green, it has Washington on it, and it was distributed for free. But Granieri's invitation was to look closer, to engage the bill materially, not as the index of a given exchange value but as the tangible expression of a social relation. Washington's face indicates that somebody has been tricked in this exchange. The bill, seemingly authentic in a general visual sense, and blatantly false to the touch and the attentive look, was aimed at sparking critical commentary of what people had taken for granted—that pesos would automatically and magically become dollars, and thus, according to Granieri, dolores. Acting as dinero trucho (counterfeitmoney), the dolor provided a visual representation that marked the end of an era in which Argentineans were led to believe that the country had entered the developing world. The government used the equivalency between the dollar and the peso as evidence of Argentina's entrance in the first world. What was taking place for this to happen was the shift from an economy based on production to one based on speculation. Once again, money was the virtual reference of that giant step, the route to a first world status, not actual but real, a grand simulation.

Granieri's bill is both an object in its own right and a sign that points in the direction of the real dollar. It is both our dolor and our dollar: in our real dollar, Washington is troubled or has been cheated, as the expression in his eyes seems to indicate.

Moreover, through its denomination—UN DOLOR—the dolor embodied the collective feeling of betrayal that was shared across social lines: the middle class felt betrayed by the state, who did not honor its promises; and the poor by the middle class, who "bought" the lie. Washington, humorously, becomes the face of the Argentinean tragedy, the forefather in the wake of the collapse. The bill indicates that if money is not backed up solidly it can become obsolete any minute no matter who printed it.

Granieri's action was part of a series of interventions in public space, in which artists, many times individually, chose to present their work not in artistic spaces but as a personal response to the altered everydayness in which all Argentineans were caught up. This entails a practice not of display within a specific circuit of reception but of a clear insertion in the quotidian, inviting a different fruition of the piece. The dolor, Granieri's artistic artifact, was not an object to be exhibited but an object to be exchanged: a bill exchanged for an insight about this crisis; Un Dolor exchanged for a laugh, even if it was a bitter one.