Traces

 Previous to my experience in Siena, my work revolved around notions of perception, displacement, and vertigo.  Maps provide structure and stability, while they simultaneously can appear chaotic and tangled.  As a foreigner in Siena, I immediately felt the need to ground myself to something.  I was most drawn to the surfaces of buildings, their ages revealed by countless layers of peeling paint.  These sound edifices have remained structurally unchanged over hundreds of years, recording only in the subtlest of ways the life of each person or family that has passed through them.  As I studied my tourist map of Siena day after day, I gradually began to form some sense of orientation. But this feeling was easily disrupted as I continued to stumble upon new alleys and pathways up until the last days of the month I spent there.

I wanted to show this strange sensation of lost and found.  So I decided to videotape myself drawing a map of Siena.  In doing so, I aimed to document the parallel searches that come both with beginning a piece of artwork and physically orienting oneself through an unfamiliar map.  The video is over once the mess of wayward lines becomes a map of the city. 

For the final presentation of this piece, I projected the video onto one of the peeling walls I found while wandering through Siena’s meandering streets.  I chose a wall that had markings that echoed the shape of Siena, so that as my drawing unfolded on its surface, it was tracing the age lines of the wall, mapping out its history.  When the drawing is complete, the map of Siena is revealed in its entirety for a moment, made up of the peeling layers it has traced, embedded within the wall.

-erin