I made several stamps showing the Chinese character “貧” (poverty), “上級国民” (Direct meaning = upper class citizen ) / “下級国民” ( lower class citizen), former one is used Japanese famous calligrapher, and latter two came from current event, and stamped them on watercolour paper many times to indicate a sense of homogenization.
Then I pasted gold foil, which was not real gold, on the paper to show that Japan seemed to be rich but not really that rich. In addition, I removed parts of the foil on purpose to expose the areas that were stamped.
The exposed areas refer to the aesthetics of wabi-sabi in Japan, which considers deterioration due to aging to be good change.
Tito Calligraphy 