IN THE THIRD FLOOR GALLERY
MINOOSH ZOMORODINIA | PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY: IMPERFECT CARTOGRAPHIES
Open to the public March 30 - June 30, 2023
Maps are useful tools for getting from place to place; they help us understand routes, topography, and distance. They delineate borders—whether between properties, municipalities, or countries—and they tell stories. Minoosh Zomorodinia’s psychogeography searches and explores different environments to tell the story of belonging.
Awaiting a response for her Green Card application, in 2016 Zomorodinia—originally from Iran—began recording her walks carrying a cell phone with the GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking on, surveilling her every movement while navigating through the California landscape and other locations in the US. Walking through nature to clear her mind became a record of her time spent grappling with the uncertainty of her immigration status. They became maps that are a visual documentation of her labor and proof that she was there. The artist’s self-imposed surveillance is a complex act of compliance and resistance, belonging and un-belonging.
Zomorodinia’s work relies both on surveillance technologies and the absurdity of the persistent deficiencies within GPS tracking. In areas with poor cell reception, GPS pings different cell towers as the artist moves through space, creating straight lines that jut out in different directions, lines quite unlike the wavering, sometimes curved and sometimes meandering lines of her actual movements. The artist’s series could also be used as Rorschach tests, or might instead represent a crystal, or capture the jagged lines of frustration. These maps delineate the borders of a country we cannot quite recognize.