The World is Flat 1
Archival inkjet print, 2022
Dimensions variable
The World is Flat, is dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandmother who immigrated to New York’s Lower East Side from a Russian shtetl and until the day she died was convinced the world was flat. Her belief was not rooted in fact but a folklore perception that pits old-world superstitions against modern-world scientific evidence. This project echoes her mythical worldview.
I alter decades-old Kodachrome collections of slides my dad took of family vacations, outings, and parties throughout my childhood, transformed with ink, and then resurrected digitally. The flattening of color, shapes, and figures creates tension between the original captured imagery and subsequent manipulations. At times the alterations appear to echo or amplify the recognizable figurative, landscape, and architectural forms into a heightened narrative between the representational and abstraction. In other instances, the preexisting imagery is all but obliterated – a gesture based on chance by allowing shapes to form by dripping ink onto the slides. Both reference classic surrealist techniques meant to reveal subconscious associations, challenging reason and reality. Informed by my background in abstract painting and drawing, I strive to find fresh introspection as my re-imagined 20th Century family slides portray an imaginary, flattened, mystical world.