Karen Atkinson Studio
Remapping Tales of Desire, 1992 - 1996: Toronto, Canada
PROGRAMS AND EXHIBITIONS>REMAPPING TALES OF DESIRE
A project that began as a historical journey into the legacy of a language of desire within the language of discovery.
This installation project takes the viewer on a journey. It begins in the 17th century, where a young woman has
drawn a map for a potential suitor of how to get from “new amity to tender,” in other words, from friendship to
love. It takes us through a history of metaphors within the language of discovery and travel which continue to be
inscribed within colonialistic desire projected onto the description of women’s bodies. It links history to the
present.
It then proceeds to take a journey across the abyss of confined history to redefine pleasure, where sexuality,
sensuality, giving, taking and promising become acts of insinuation that will not be suspended in exploitive gazes.
It ends with a proposal to reconfigure our recourses to different maps, a place for both men and women to refuse
boundaries and reinscribe desire. 1992-1995.
Remapping Tales of Desire, Karen Atkinson, Overview A. (Toronto Exhibition)
Remapping Tales of Desire, Karen Atkinson, Overview B. (Toronto Exhibition)
Below are details of the text used in the exhibition, written by Andrea Liss for the catalog collaboration for this exhibition.
"To love without domination might then be a coming to understand that one cannot overwhelm, cannot completely inhabit, cannot "have" the other. To love without overtaking might then be an admission of distance, a recognition of sorrow. A little bit of figurative mourning. Let there by an abyss." A. Liss
Detail of plexiglas map.
Artist Book Project by Karen Atkinson and Andrea Liss, 1992. Printing as part of the Remapping Tales of Desire Exhibition.
Remapping Tales of Desire: writing across the abyss, by Karen Atkinson and Andrea Liss
This catalog publication was created as a companion work to the exhibition by Karen Atkinson titled Remapping Tales of Desire. It is meant to address more complex issues both within the exhibition and beyond it.
It explores issues of language over a period of 500 years, juxtaposing texts and images that continue to shape the way we view the travel industry, which of course continues to use the images of women's bodies to sell tourism. It uses a map from the 16th century, a radical step beyond it's time, to illustrate an alternative to five centuries of practice.
It is available from the artist. ARTIST BOOK DETAILS>
The following are detail images of the exhibition.
The following are details of the silkscreened plexiglas maps.
English translation of the French above.
Images for specific shows can be found below.
LOS ANGELES, CA
NEW YORK, NY
TORONTO, CANADA
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
HAVANA, CUBA