Felt Presence
UV print on vacuum-formed PETG
2023
This is a series of experiments that began when I sketched a map of the apartment that my aunt lived in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates purely from memory. I built a wooden model of the map using laser-cut wood, then created a plastic mold of the model using vacuum forming. The plastic model map was then UV printed with a current Google Maps image of my aunt’s neighborhood, after decades of renovation.
The process of vaccuum forming this map caused the plastic to crack around the elevations of the wooden model, creating topographic contours that indicated the presence of the past layout of the neighborhood, mapping its change as felt and visceral. As I peeled off the plastic, I also damaged the wooden model, echoing the gaps in my own memory and the gashes that these changes leave. Conceptually, plastic gives the illusion of permanence yet is susceptible to change when subject to high heat, an apt metaphor for the changing urban landscape.
