Chronotopic Cartographies for Literature explores the various states of fictionality in the representation and role of landscape and environment across literature. In this work, the artist has visually interpreted six degrees of fictionality as a multi-layered landscape:
• Crumbled ancient ruins represent a space that once did exist in the real world, but no longer does.
• A hillside village represents a real historical, cultural, and geographic place in the world.
• A distant bridge symbolizes a journey between a real-world setting and an imaginary space, and back again.
• A towering mountain represents a topographical element deemed to be real but is not place-specific.
• Billowing clouds symbolize an imaginative region integrating real and fictional space.
• An infinite starry cosmos represents a fictional universe that has no direct point of reference in the world.
• A hillside village represents a real historical, cultural, and geographic place in the world.
• A distant bridge symbolizes a journey between a real-world setting and an imaginary space, and back again.
• A towering mountain represents a topographical element deemed to be real but is not place-specific.
• Billowing clouds symbolize an imaginative region integrating real and fictional space.
• An infinite starry cosmos represents a fictional universe that has no direct point of reference in the world.
This work was designed and constructed in the winter of 2017-2018, commissioned by The Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University for the Chronotopic Cartographies project (2017-2020) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Images were inkjet printed on 100-pound Royal Sundance paper, hinged with linen tape. The clamshell box is constructed of board, Japanese silk bookcloth, and ribbon. This is a unique work.
