ADRIANE COLBURN
Artist Statement
Adriane Colburn- Artist Statement
Over the past several years, I have developed a series of installations that
investigate the complex relationships between human infrastructure, earth
systems, technology and the natural world. These constructions, comprised
primarily of layers of hand cut paper, digital prints, video and projected light,
reimagine maps and photographs of places that are obscured by geography,
scale or the passing of time. At the core of my work is a fascination with the way
that our attempts to make sense of the world around us through maps, data and
pictures result in abstractions that are simultaneously informative and utterly
ambiguous. I create my installations by transforming images through a system of
physical removal, cutting out everything except imperative lines, thus creating
constructions that are informed by voids as much as by positive marks. Through
this process of cutting and display, an intricate array of shadows results.
My most recent projects are derived from scientific data, images and video I
have collected while participating in expeditions in the Arctic and Amazon. These
works look at the ways that data is collected in these remote environments, the
altered face of these land/seascapes as the climate changes and the
relationships between scientific exploration and exploitation. I am especially
interested in how mapping is used to investigate fragile and inaccessible
ecosystems along the edges of the Earth’s last vestiges of wilderness. In the
Arctic I was part of a seafloor mapping expedition onboard the USCG ship the
Healy, that was both conducting groundbreaking science and supporting the US
quest to lay claim over areas of the Arctic Ocean and the wealth of oil and gas
held captive there. In the Amazon, I have trekked through the most bio-diverse
place on the planet as it was being mapped simultaneously for conservation and
oil exploration. Both of these heavily romanticized places are being visualized
(using technology such as sonar, LIDAR and satellite imaging) in precise and
complex ways for the first time and through this are becoming increasingly less
remote. The result is a frontier that is open to territorial debate and exploitation.
Through my process of participating in expeditions, and creating works from
the research, I am attempting to touch on the how our attempts to understand
and visualize a landscape can irrevocably alter it. I am interested in the human
relationship to wilderness and frontiers at a time when there are very few
uncommodified and unknown corners of the globe.