Cut and reconstituted map fragments, acrylic ground on canvas and board
100.0 x 100.0 （厘米）
39.4 x 39.4 （吋）
Transparent Territory, Perpetual Proximity is a drawing that has been constructed from the fragments of decommissioned and discarded terrestrial maps. The focus in this drawing (and in the related ‘Transparent Territory’ series), is on the act of taking the flat, rectangular depictions of landmass and territory (that maps are), and to reconfigure them into a mineral–like geometric construction in which folds, facets and overlays constructs an spatial illusion and a sense of depth and interiority within the flatness of the map. The series takes inspiration from early depictions of perspectival illusion, most notably Giotto’s clustering of architectural structures. Also of interest are early depictions of the ‘inhabitation of the world’, particularly the image of the cave (St Jerome in his cave), where there is a sense of burrowing into the earth. The transparent territories series similarly burrows into the flatness of geographic depiction through an act of ‘cartographic mining’, in which the solidity of geographic surface is ruptured into a transparent palimpsest of geography and historical time that contradicts and undermines the assumed authority, singular viewpoint and individuated voice of the singular map.
