The exhibition Mapping Brooklyn will juxtapose the work of contemporary artists working with historic maps, with examples of maps themselves, suggesting the myriad ways that maps can represent on the one hand, such practical matters as way finding, property ownership, population shifts, and war strategy, and on other, the terrain of the metaphorical, psychological, and personal. ( Description taken from the BRIC website)
Insurance Maps of the Borough of Brooklyn, City of New York, Sanborn Map Company, 1915-1933
Simonetta Moro
For this piece Simonetta Moro had to dig into the historical collection of insurance maps from Brooklyn Historical Society. She probably had to do research about the methods that brought the map to look the way it does. The maps are insurance maps from 1921 that have been altered over 70 years. In that time residents of these areas had the initial map, but then added a new layer every other year which represented the changes that had been made in the neighborhood regarding lot numbers and house arrangements.
Crossing Prospect Exressway, 2014
In the piece below Simonetta tried to recreate it the concept with her personal artistic touch, using ink and mixed media on Mylar and Plexiglas.
OSH, Brooklyn (Plot re-visualized), 2012
Christine Gedeon
In her artwork, Christine Gedeon tries to express hidden traces of buildings past. She thinks that urban renewal projects suppress the past and create an unreal sense of utopia. She have used fabric and sewn together them to create her own visualization of an utopia. In her research she probably investigated how the neighborhoods used to look like, and asked the residents how and utopia would look like for them.
Million Dollar Blocks, 2005
Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL)
In this artwork, SIDL have researched on the information regarding incarceration statistics in poor neighborhoods in Brooklyn. They try to take lame, blatant information and make it into a visual experience that intrigues the viewer. SIDL have used national databases for the statistics that pose a major problem and made it into something understandable for the everyday person. They have collaborated with mathematicians and designers to create this experience, which not often is the easiest combination.
71 Square Miles, 2015
Jennifer Marvillas
For this art piece Jennifer Marvillas walked every neighborhood of entire Brooklyn. She covered 71 square miles and it took her 3 years to complete this artwork. Before she walked into a certain neighborhood she probably had to research what specifically defined it, whether it was race, ethnicity or cultural history.
She then walked the neighborhoods and picked up a piece of thrash that would represent the neighborhood block on her map. When you look closely at each piece of thrash, they are very specific to the neighborhoods and you can definitely get a sense of which one it is. The thrash ranges from take out menus, news paper articles, foreign candy wrappers etc.
