Heartland, 2012
Topiary, 2012 from the series, Seat Assignment (2010 to present)
"Maps were the first things I started working with as an artist. My early maps were dissections of paper road maps that I made by using an exacto knife and cutting away all the land, leaving only the roads. The web-like structures that result are reminiscent of human anatomy, resembling a blood network or nerve system. My map for Indianapolis, entitled Heartland, is made from two AAA (Automobile Association of America) road maps of the state that were excised, then joined, and formed into a heart shape before being photographed."
"Seat Assignment is an ongoing series of photographs, video, and sound works, all made in flight using only a camera phone and improvising with materials close at hand. The project began spontaneously on a flight I took in March 2010 and in the 100 subsequent flights since then has grown far beyond my expectations. Using my tray table as my studio and an in-flight magazine article on Lake Como as a source, I constructed the photograph, Topiary, during a flight from Finland to New York, assembling a fantastical, oversize topiary with peas I purchased before boarding the plane. Seat Assignment is born from an investment in thinking on your feet, from optimism about the artistic potential that lurks within the mundane, and from curiosity about the productive tension between freedom and constraint."
— Nina Katchadourian (Brooklyn, NY)