In the book The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon, you’ll find 360 images of artwork and art series that bear new meaning to any preconceived idea of the appearance and purpose of maps. Over 100 artists, who create artwork using maps, are inspired by maps or offer new interpretations of maps, contributed to a compilation that speaks to the human spirit and our own placement in the world.
From a tattooed map on a man’s back representing his long and triumphant journey along China’s 6,000 mile Long March to a map made out of the artists’ own hair, the pieces are as diverse as they are personal. You’ll find pieces as abstract as the bold, colorful lines of oil on canvas over a map in Julian Schnabel’s “South Coast Prickly Point,” to a photograph from Corriette Schoenaerts of clothing laid on a bed in the shape of South America.
Each page of the book offers something new and exploratory to the viewer. The pieces provide social and political commentary that critique ourselves in a world of no geographical constraints, but a world with the ability to create and alter locations as we wish.
Full of color, texture, and unexplainable diversity, the pages of the The Map as Art will keep you entranced throughout. Every image will keep you guessing until you read the paragraph beside that explains what the piece of artwork represents. From first glance, you may often find yourself having no idea what the piece is supposed to show.
As obscure as the message may seem, or the way in which it’s executed, a powerful message shines through in each piece in the book. As art is the artists’ own interpretation of the world, The Map as Art takes it one step further, showing us the ways in which the world comes into art.
Talk with Katherine Harmon
Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St.
Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
Free