Peter Hammar (MFA ’12) opened Mapping Empty Space at the Swedish American Museum (Chicago, IL) on Friday, March 7th. The exhibit is Hammar’s first solo show in Chicago.
Mapping Empty Spaces emphasizes the story of the immigrant, both past and present, and is inspired by the museum’s permanent exhibit A Dream of America. According to the Swedish American Museum, “Hammar reexamines—with a twist—some universal questions about past and present, loss and gain, absence, selective memory, myths and popular Swedish culture through his mixed media pieces and installations.” The title of the exhibition is derived from Polish-American philosopher and semanticist Alfred Korzybski, who said that “the map is not the territory.” In other words, the map is only an abstract representation of a reality, and not the reality, itself. In Mapping Empty Spaces, Hammar takes from this notion the themes of permanence and the fleeting moment and applies them to the narrative of the immigrant experience.
Mapping Empty Spaces will run until Sunday, June 15th, 2014 at the Swedish American Museum: 5211 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640.
For more information, visit the Swedish American Museum online.
This article was written with the help of the announcement by the Swedish American Museum.
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