Michelle Stuart (American, b. 1940)
Navigating Coincidence, 1986
Portfolio of five color etchings 23 ½ x 30 ½ in. each
Michelle Stuart uses a wide variety of artistic practices —large-scale earthworks, rubbings, collages, drawings, photography, and sculpture—to record the natural world and the impact humans have on the environment. Maps, cartography, and scientific documentation are prominent throughout her work. As a child, Stuart accompanied her father as he surveyed waterlines in southern California and later, during the Korean War, she worked as a topographical draftsperson for the US Army Corps of Engineers.
For Stuart, maps contain valuable information about the social and physical history of a place. In Navigating Coincidence, Stuart questions scientific exploration, specifically the recording, mapping, naming and ultimately controlling of lands and people. According to the artist, the notion of scientific conquest is limiting; instead, Stuart prefers the exploration of new conceptual spaces and alternative cosmologies that may lead to an expanded idea of the existing connections between ideas and people.
Stuart’s work can be found in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Dia Art Foundation, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others.
More information about Michelle Stuart can be found here:
https://michellestuartstudio.com/
https://hirshhorn.si.edu/explore/at-home-on-art-and-exploration-artist-talk-with-michelle-stuart/