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Restructured Topography
installation with vinyl tape, text on paper and acetate, pins and map tacks installation view at SPACE Pittsburgh, PA 2008 Restructured Topography invited the viewer to navigate through a series of interconnected lines, patterns, marks and textual elements. A series of placards and pieces of acetates with text were placed throughout the mapping system as if following a non-linear timeline. These combine personal references, found text and data pertaining to the Bermuda Triangle. The work was installed in a triangle-shaped architectural space with large glass windows; the work was viewable and readable from inside the gallery as well as from the street. In the essay Nayda Collazo-Llorens: Navigable Zones, independent curator Laura Roulet wrote: Employing repetition, variation and mapping, Collazo-Llorens explores the mind’s internal systems. How is one’s external environment perceived, ordered and remembered? Reflecting her dual-cultural existence, themes of displacement, navigation and language are prevalent. Born in the tropical zone of Puerto Rico, Collazo-Llorens has learned to navigate a dual-cultural, bilingual way of life. Accessing the island requires an air or sea route. Humans follow the same pathways of hurricanes, an arc along the east coast of the United States. Like migratory birds, Puerto Ricans freely traverse the guagua aérea (air bus) route between San Juan and New York, the two culture capitals. Yet, in between, lie the three points of the Bermuda Triangle, a pitfall, a myth, a mystery. The passage is not always so free or easy. In the Pittsburgh City Paper’s review of the exhibition You Are Here, Amy Joan Bowman wrote: Collazo-Llorens’s site-specific installation, meanwhile, is the highlight of the exhibition. Using scientific data from the Bermuda Triangle, she plots random points and darting, criss-crossing vectors across walls and windows. The lines approach a central vortex in the gallery’s rounded-glass corner. Her work beautifully conveys the complexity and patterned randomness of incident. |
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