Artist Statement: Jennifer Brazelton, for “Bumpy Terrain,” showing October 2015
Artist Jennifer Brazelton wants you to experience nationalism in new and unexpected ways. For the past three years she has been creating sculptures using maps of nations whose shapes are altered by human population data. These oddly distorted two-dimensional cartogram drawings were created by Benjamin D. Hennig’s PhD research.
Jennifer transforms these maps through research and her creative process into three-dimensional sculptures. She layers organic and patterned surfaces over the “bumpy terrain” in an effort to make the sculptures pulse with life. The countries she sculpts are topical and in the media. Often, just the act of sculpting a particular country becomes a political act. These population-distorted maps are a Trojan Horse for a different view on a country or culture.