Tommy Cash

Tommy Cash’s practice is as transdisciplinary as it is transgressive. The Estonian polymath’s official bio describes him as a rapper, singer, and conceptual artist, but he prefers to do away with easy distinctions. To him, everything he does is simply a Tommy Cash product. Beyond solo outings like his 2018 sophomore LP ¥€$, Cash has appeared on tracks with 100 gecs, Charli XCX, Danny L Harle, and Diplo. He’s worked with high fashion institutions like Maison Martin Margiela and affordable furniture institutions like IKEA. He’s also something of an artist confidant to Rick Owens. In 2019, Cash colluded with the dark prince of fashion to create the exhibition The Pure and the Damned at Tallinn’s Kumu Art Museum, which included a small tank filled with a few million of Cash’s sperm. It’s hard to know what to make of it all, which seems to be exactly what Cash is aiming for. Cash’s worldview, forged in the gap between the collapse of the USSR and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism, seeks to make plain the absurdity of our permacrisis present by upping the dose and pushing further into delirium.

Cash’s dissatisfaction with the current state of art and fashion, combined with his visionary outlook on the non-conforming future of the creative industries, has driven him to explore appropriation and other expressive forms. Tommy engages in quotation, appropriation, masquerading, provocation, hoaxes, fictions, carnivalesque, and anti-artistic postures within the hype culture, venturing into music production, activism, video production, performance art, and the market-driven art world. He continues the disruptive strategies of artist collectives like Bernadette Corporation, DIS, or MSCHF, operating at the intersection of art and fashion. Tommy consistently challenges fashion’s frenzied systems while pioneering new forms of aesthetic entrepreneurship and eccentric performances.

After a year full of eccentric antics and collaboration, Alexander Burenkov spoke with Tommy about the uncanny cartoons of his childhood, erotic dreams, and making yourself a mass-produced commodity.

Alexander Burenkov

The world seems on the verge of falling apart. Last year, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine, the risk of “nuclear Armageddon” has reached the highest level since the Caribbean crisis. Last year as your personal anti-war statement you presented on a stand of Temnikova&Kasela gallery at Paris Internationale 2022 a project called Nukerashka, a series sculptures of mutant tributes to the popular Soviet cartoon character Cheburashka, a clumsy bear-like creature that is as recognizable in the post-Soviet world as Mickey Mouse is in the West. Eduard Uspensky, the creator of the character, named it after a defective toy from his childhood, but in your hands the furry creature, as the project’s portmanteau name suggests, is reimagined as a product of nuclear catastrophe. It’s a hallucinatory juxtaposition of individual fantasy and global social neurosis that takes on an eerie resonance in the wake of the invasion in Ukraine. Shot through with acerbic satire and unsettling jokes, the collection both dissects and demonstrates the dark humor with which we try to face apocalyptic dread. In a way, you anticipated this feeling of doomsday looming so close by creating this mutated radioactive nuke-powered monster, terrifying and sweet at the same time.

Tommy Cash

It’s funny because I came up with this idea before the war even started. It’s been like this with many things I made before as well. I have a sense of what’s coming. My Nukies were in my head for a long time. I even had these images in 3D in 2021.

Alexander Burenkov

You often work with post-Soviet imagery and cultural clichés. This particular character of cult Soviet cartoons. Cheburashka first appeared in your song “Pussy Money Weed” when you compared yourself with it (“I got huge ears, big eyes, call me Cheburashka, My flow is ice cold, so my swag is from Alaska”). What’s special about this character for you?

Tommy Cash

It’s not the first time I’ve worked with characters from Soviet cartoons. My first ever exhibited sculptures, presented at Kumu in my joint show with Rick Owens, were statues of the hare and wolf characters from Nu, pogodi! but in a pop art Americana style. The imagery was Soviet but they look like Americans.

Alexander Burenkov

Those figures look like glossy sister figurines to Jeff Koons’ metal balloon dogs. It’s as if Koons suddenly became interested in the heritage of Soviet animation and decided to construct monuments to these characters.

Tommy Cash

Yeah, but for me, it was part of my childhood. I’m half-Ukrainian, half-Russian, so the whole house spoke Russian. The two coolest things my dad showed me growing up were Bremenskie muzykanty (The Town Musicians of Bremen)—which I consider the most beautiful cartoon made in Soviet Russia, I will make sculptures of them too one day— and the LSD-coloured Yellow Submarine vinyl. I was there in the middle so I didn’t need to do any research. I was very familiar with all these aesthetics. Taina tretey planety (The Secret of the Third Planet) is another mind-blowing cartoon.

Alexander Burenkov

You often endow characters in your video clips with your own face, like in the “Little Molly” video. But this time you turned the face and body of Cheburashka into a canvas. By giving him your personal style with recognizable Tommy Cash accessories you transformed it into a personal mascot and action figure which looks like a multiplied version of yourself. For Alessandro Michele, who sent 68 pairs of identical twins down the runway for Gucci SS23, it was a manifestation of his fascination with “the impossibility of the perfectly identical” and “the deception of similitude.” For Andy Warhol, the idea of creating doppelgängers was a dream solution to live life fully and attend all the events he was invited to. What was the reason for you to duplicate yourself?

Tommy Cash

I relate to Andy’s ideas a lot. When I was touring America six months ago I visited his museum and grave in Pittsburg because I just needed to pay respect to my father. He tapped consumerism so early, it’s just unbelievable. Now, when Demna and Balenciaga create this bold critique of consumerism in the form of a Lays packet transformed into a real bag, it definitely looks like an homage to Andy. They say trends repeat every 20 years, but now everything has become even faster. 

Alexander Burenkov

If we continue this analogy with Warhol, it’s interesting that when you speak about your work you often refer to it as a product. Whatever you produce—music, merchandise, fashion, or art—it seems like you operate within the logic of production, of “drops.” Do you consider yourself a content maker, an artist, or rather a brand?

Tommy Cash

I’m a walking brand under the creative direction and control of an artist. Murakami, Koons, Warhol, or even Dali all became brands. For me, it’s all a product. Whatever comes out of my head is driven by my idea of what I would like to have or wear, what I haven’t seen before. How many layers it eventually has, how deep it is, is also important. 

Alexander Burenkov

Your relentless experimentation, dystopian brand-hacking, and examination of the contemporary fashion industry’s limits and labor and production politics have led to high-profile collaborations with Maison Martin Margiela, Rick Owens, Adidas, and Kappa in recent years. The idea behind your latest collection to date consisted of old/pre owned clothing items was to recycle your previous collection of clothes that had aged and deteriorated, being rotted like food in a refrigerator without electricity. What role does recycling and upcycling play in your creative process? Have you ever thought to rework your past music and, for example, releasing your last album in a new edited redux version?

Tommy Cash

Recycling and upcycling are big for me, not just in fashion but in life. It's about giving things a new life, a new story. As for my music, maybe one day I'll drop a wild redux version of an album. Who knows? I like to keep things unpredictable.

Alexander Burenkov

This collection was clearly inspired by  punk culture and grange style which isn't just an ode to rebellion and dissent; it's an anthem to self-expression, independence, and, above all, freedom. Initially, it was synonymous with societal destitution, carelessness, and a rejection of aesthetics. It gained notoriety for its audacious, nonchalant, and rebellious sartorial ethos. What is your personal relationship with these styles of music? How did they influence your development as a musician and artist?

Tommy Cash

Grunge and punk, they're in my blood. They've shaped me as an artist and musician. They're raw, rebellious, and authentic. They influenced my style and my music.

Alexander Burenkov

In your previous interviews about your trajectory in music you’ve mentioned that you like Madonna and other key figures in the pop mainstream. Why did you decide to enter contemporary art, which is very elitist and niche? It gives the impression that instead of converting yourself into a pop idol you’d prefer to direct all your energy into artistic experiments.

Tommy Cash

I wasn’t born a musician. I started doing music for fun when I was in my twenties, but before that I was very into drawing and graffiti. I found out about Murakami and his collaboration with Kanye West when I was around 16 or 17 and then my dream was just to become that type of big artist. I knew it would definitely happen one day, but for now, I felt it was just logical to go into art-making. The thing that I love is making stuff, big physical items—whatever it is, say a clothing collaboration or the production of sculptures—and I can’t get bigger than large installations for now. I’m in my thirties and can successfully make music for 20 years more, but I feel it’s better to develop in many different directions at the same time. 

Alexander Burenkov

Temnikova & Kasela's booth walls at Paris Internationale were arranged as a fan store with merchandise and collectibles but also included a special area for activating your project "Let's keep playing" which was designed as an invitation to play twister in one of plush costumes of the heraldic animals which embodied the symbolic representation of the animals from the coats of arms of the various states and the vernacular symbols of cultures. The visitors were encouraged to dress in costumes, play twister with the people they know or fellow visitors and thus experience “the great game” of geopolitics. Can you tell me more about your performance projects you started to develop recently?  

Tommy Cash

On my social media accounts you can see my recent performances in Paris and Milan. From napping in a duvet set at Y/Project, to going full-on mime at Rick Owens, or from performeing as a baby in the summer at a Marine Serre show to cosplaying photographer at the Balenciaga show, and wearing a body-shaped backpack at the Ricks Owens show, for me it snot a mere self-indulgence or hooliganism, I consider my appearances in fashion shows as a critical reflection of the state of fashion and the socioeconomic conditions of contemporary society. It’s not just posing with a look, it’s a real performance. Marina Abramovic style, but trying to do it for real with real celebrities like the Kardashians. My presence at the Diesel show during Milan Fashion Week is no exception, as it conveys a clear critique of the widespread cynicism surrounding trends like poverty chic, homeless core, or clochard style, as it may be called. I'm all about controlled chaos, surprise, and pushing boundaries bringing new ideas and life to these show offs. Breaks for sure, stop? I’m a living spontaneous machine and I could feel different the next day.                 

Alexander Burenkov

Do you think art should be intimate or should look like a product? How do you find a balance between self-commodification and sincerity?

Tommy Cash

I’m just very open, I smile a lot and don’t think too much about how to say something. 

Alexander Burenkov

You believe that people in the post-Soviet territories are crazier, more excessive, more radical, more aggressive, more authentic, and simply have more energy compared to the West. The style of your music performance on stage is also usually described as energetic and rough, and at the same time light-hearted, cheerful, and sincere. Do you consider your sincerity and openness as part of your Eastern European mentality and identity?

Tommy Cash

It’s all about truth and balancing everything. I don’t want people to come to my show and see something lying on the ground, read about every piece for five minutes, think about every piece for 10 minutes, and then later go home and maybe understand what it was in a year’s time. I want art to be approachable for all people and to speak with them directly through feelings and emotions. Take Piero Manzoni’s work Artist's Breath (1960), a series of balloons filled with his own breath: it really works. Or my work One Million in Cash) containing my sperm protected with glass, it works as well.  

Alexander Burenkov

Surrealism as a genre and worldview has a moment right now in art world, with last year’s Venice Biennale (and its collateral projects) inspired by Leonora Carrington’s book The Milk of Dreams. The aesthetic influence of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Salvador Dali are evident in your practice. Did you ever have any dreams or visions which were realised afterwards in your projects?

Tommy Cash

Of course. I didn’t ejaculate for a year and a half when I was making the music video for “Surf.” I see so many images during the day. It’s a total visual overload. I live in a dream so sleep is usually a total blackout. I need to be normal sometimes and not think about grandiose things, so I become normal while sleeping. But during this period of sexual abstinence, I had very very erotic dreams which I then put into my works. I was so horned up.

Alexander Burenkov

But what is your dream collaboration in music, fashion and visual art?

Tommy Cash

There is many people I would like to work with but actually the right way would be to stop and collaborate only with myself. Ive done many collabs in my career span. But I feel the window to want to collaborate gonna be closed soon. To be truly unique closed brand. Till the moment I want to do It again.

Alexander Burenkov

If you will be proposed to stage a show of your works in any place of the world, which one would you choose?

Tommy Cash

I think about three places: New York, Japan, and Paris. I would love to stage the exhibition which will be so good so it will tour around the world basically. Everything in the right time.

Alexander Burenkov

Why you still prefer to be based in your hometown and not move to a bigger megapolis like New York to immerse yourself in a more international life?

Tommy Cash

I am kind of afraid of moving to another city. Maybe meeting too many people is too much for me. It’s better to go to Paris twice a year and then come back home. Being in Tallinn now is such a privilege, I’m surrounded here by wind, do you hear it over my window? Before Paris I was in LA where I even didn’t go out. Pretty much very day I was in my studio working on my craft. One of my future shows should be called “I moved to LA and I lost myself”.

Text: Alexander Burenkov

Photographs Dimitri Gerasimov