2011
Peephole dioramas
mixed media
dimensions variable
This solo exhibition by Piper Mavis began when she was invited to Seoul to work on a project about Seoul as an imagined space. Piper, originally from Los Angeles, and now living in Paris, is familiar with many cities around the world, but she has never had a chance to visit Seoul. How does one begin work on a project in response to a city one has never been to? This was even more challenging as her previous work tended to be quite personal, with themes of memories and nostalgia.
The artist decided to collect personal stories of a few Korean people she encountered who used to live in Seoul and had memories of the city. Through these people’s stories and childhood memories, she created a personalized tour of Seoul’s landmarks and attempted to become acquainted with the foreign city. She then created the imagined city by way of a shoebox peephole diorama – which she often had to create in grade school in America. With these stories shared by strangers, through the subjective filter of the artist’s imagination, in a series of shoe boxes (an item often used by people to store old photographs and letters) and craft materials, the artist’s journey to Seoul began a long time before her physical arrival.
Copyright 2011 Sunee Markosov, Vector Space
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