IDENTITY MAPS (2018)
In this series, I have worked with fingerprint imagery to consider themes related to identity, intimacy and knowledge of the self. Fingerprints represent a visual expression of each person’s uniqueness. They also offer a set of miniature maps that might reveal clues to essential identity, one’s own or another person’s.
I made prints of my own fingers and gathered the prints of family members, then enlarged them to create personal topographies on a macro scale. The results were surprising – some became galaxies, others resembled cityscapes, still others turned into fantastic structures or landscapes, increasingly abstract the larger they grew. Each became a far more complicated network of lines, shapes, patterns and lacunae than anything imaginable at its original size.
I used the enlargements, generally 3 x 2 feet, to create several drawings, mixed media pieces and installations, each a meditation on aspects of identity. Red and Black #1 and #2 are drawings on vellum with alternating areas of rich detail and empty space. The multi-panel installation of suspended vellum sheets, Interior Astronomy, was inspired in part by the Chilean documentary Nostalgia for the Light. This film compares the deep space research of scientists working at observatories in the Atacama Desert with Pinochet regime survivors who patiently comb the desert soil for evidence of lost loved ones. Each layer of vellum reveals additional information until the final, complete, deep red image. The work’s stages of progression, translucence and gentle movement as air flows through it suggest the many layers of identity and the fluid, unstable nature of identity over time.
New Territory, a four-panel piece that is both drawing and sculpture, creates a literal topography for interior exploration, a three-dimensional landscape of the self. The strips of torn paper that form the map’s topography are meant to be organic, flawed, a bit messy. Terra Incognita, a mixed media work created using India ink over white glue on Yupo paper, alludes to barely visible pathways in a dark landscape. These works require a meditative pace, both to create and to view. That sense of time is integral to their meaning, a reflection of the commitment needed to explore the intricacies of identity and the self.