Reading Between the Nonexistent Lines

Augustina Woodgate
The Times Atlas of The World (Book) 2012
Sanded World Atlas (515 pages)

Kiley Burns
A Sketch of The Times Atlas of the World (Book)
Very cool, Very nice, Very swag (1 page)

When our tour guide brought us to this piece, I found myself asking questions with a recurring theme.

Why?
Just why?
Why on earth would someone spend seven hours, seven days a week for four months sanding down an atlas?
Why would someone even come up with that idea?

And that, my friends, is exactly why this piece stood out to me the most during our journey to view the Limited Visibility exhibit at CAM, and why I am undertaking the lovely task of analyzing this unconventional piece of art.

The whole meaning of this piece lies within what we can't see- the borders, the bright blocks that represent countries, the tiny dots of cities.  All that remains are the shadows of regions and faint outlines.  I interpreted this piece to mean that we (humans) are all one.  Borders only serve to divide us; while they give us a sense of nationalistic pride, they also create tensions or competitions between different people.  Imagine if there were no borders.  Imagine if we all could roam freely among these giant slabs of land.  There would be no immigrants, no citizens, no border patrols.

Augustina Woodgate used sand paper to erase everything but the faint colors off of all 515 pages of this atlas.  It is hard to distinguish this as an atlas.  We only see the hues of green and blue that we normally associate with the earth.  Think back to when you were a kid and were asked to draw the globe.  You didn't sit down and draw out each border of each country.  No, you drew a circle of blue with green masses.  That's what this piece does.  It makes the world seem simpler.

Everything about this piece has been neutralized, even the texture.  It is soft and smooth, almost velvety, to the touch.  Every aspect is atypical of an atlas.  The turning of the pages is even easier and quieter.  I feel like this gives the piece another appealing dimension. Everyone can be amused by the soft, delicate nature of the pages.  There are no page numbers; it just flows.  The texture further adds to the simplicity of the piece.  It has been sanded down to its true meaning.

She is erasing borders and the political tensions that overlap with geography.  The colors seem to blend together, rather than starkly contrasting each other.  An atlas is so organized, so methodically thought out; it literally shows the economic, environmental, and geographical features of every country.  Now, all of that is gone.  Some may wonder, "Well what is its value now?"  I believe that this piece is intended to make people think outside of the box (cliche, I know).  I have had numerous map tests, labeling this country and labeling that country.  I have been taught that "one country invaded another country because of that country's access to a certain resource", or "this country declared independence from this country, so the borders had to be redrawn."  But what if we did not think of the world in terms of borders or economic specialties?  Imagine how different things would be.  Personally, I cannot fathom the idea, but it's a pretty cool concept to ponder.  This takes us back to a time in which we did not exist.  A time before the borders were drawn and there were conflicting political and environmental agendas.

This artwork truly embodies the idea of the Limited Visibility exhibit.  You cannot gather anything from what you see, but rather from what was left behind.  Maybe an un-sanded atlas would have the same meaning, though.  The value of our world lies deeper than represented by the borders drawn on a map.