[Description forthcoming]
Local Project
2136 44th Road
Long Island City, New York
Artists: James Banta, Evan Kopelson, Jay Platt
Exhibit Coordinator: Andaleeb Banta
This multi-media installation project was inspired by the process of circumambulating the island of Manhattan on foot in just one day. On May 8, 1999, James Banta, Evan Kopelson, Marshall Mintz, and Jay Platt met at Castle Clinton in Battery Park and started walking counterclockwise from the south end of Manhattan, following the East River northward, staying as close as possible to the perimeter of the island.
After 17 hours, the group came full circle to the southern tip of Manhattan and completed their trek of approximately 30 miles. During the "Circumanhattanation," the participants used slides, digital photographs, Super 8 film, and maps to document the group’s route and experiences.
Manhattan is home and workplace to millions. Yet, there are many pockets of its urban geography that are seen by few of its denizens and visited by even fewer on foot. The “Circumanhattanation” exhibit seeks to explore how a peripheral journey can reveal a New York unfamiliar to most pedestrians.
The paintings, slides, photographs, and film exhibited at Local Project in March 2004 capture alternate perspectives on our immediate surroundings without the points of reference, such as street grids, people, and density of buildings, that are indispensable components of the average New Yorker’s daily experience.
The Jantar Mantar is an astronomical observatory in Jaipur, India, that dates from 1716 AD. It is one of five such observatories established by the Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh of Jaipur (1688-1743 AD).
The Jantar Mantar in Jaipur consists of a complex of large instruments that resemble abstract architectural sculptures. These devices were constructed for accurately measuring time and tracking the movements of the sun, moon, and planets.
The Samrat Yantra is the largest instrument, measuring 90 feet high. It is aligned with the latitude of Jaipur and its shadow follows the position of the sun to tell the time of day like a gigantic sundial.
These paintings of the Samrat Yantra celebrate this beautiful apparatus that captured my fascination while travelling in India. Because the Jantar Mantar defines the position of the observer in relation to his or her place in the universe, it reminds us not only of the achievements of science and construction, but of the intimacy we ultimately share in this world.
I take inspiration from world history, geography, and questions of identity. My paintings examine lines, both literal and symbolic. The lines we draw around ourselves and others are often arbitrary, imaginary, and ephemeral, yet they define our physical location, national affiliation, and intellectual or cultural identity. In reality, lines on a map are just lines that frequently indicate little difference between sides and do not accurately reflect the people they separate or associate. Although we recognize the lines that define and divide people, we take liberty crossing in and out of them. A society's appropriation of the Other - whether annexing territory or adopting popular cultural characteristics - represents this transgression of actual and symbolic boundaries.
In this series, I draw attention to the boundaries that appear to divide us from one another. Whether man-made or natural, political boundaries create emotional and psychological divisions as well as physical ones. In acknowledging these divisions, we too easily accept them as demarcations of differences between people. While I do not want to suggest that the world should be a homogenous entity exhibiting no differentiation between cultures, I do wish to call into question the divisiveness of our social practices. I also intend to point out the moveable aspect of our world's partitions and the absurd nature of our continued misunderstanding as we perpetually carve up the globe.
Put simply, my paintings are abstractions of the physical world viewed from different perspectives as a means to examine current or past social and political situations. For example, I depict a war-torn land without its contested political boundaries (Holy Land); a border that divides land and people with a common history and way of life (Thar Desert); the setting of an historical event that had significant ramifications in the relations between Christians and Muslims (The Battle of Lepanto); and the post-9/11 renaming of three nations ("Atlas of Evil").
My travels and heritage encourage a view of the world as an intersection between cultures. In these mixed media artworks constructed from photographs, maps, text, and fabric, I collect and reassemble 2" x 2" slide mounts – my "cells" of memories – into personalized portraits of my experiences.