Nikki Rosato: Anthropomorphic maps
Nikki Rosato is an American artist, born in New York, curently living in Washinghton. She attended the University of Pittsburgh, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where she earned a MFA.
The Origin of the artist’s work
As the artist herself says in the video introduction to her works, each person lives key moments that shape their existence and make them what they are. The turning point for her artistic research was during university, when she experienced her first family loss. From that moment on she became obsessed with the relationship between the free mind and the body, seen as a structural shell.
The skin is identified by the artist as an envelope that contains the essence of a person. Rosato therefore tried to better understand the tissues and the surfaces of the skin by redrawing every single wrinkle and ripple on herself. The connection between this project and maps happened when in a library she found a box with old road maps and in roads and rivers she recognised human anatomy.
She started creating her artworks by removing the landmass and leaving only roads and rivers. This led to her first series Connections
“My work focuses on the individual and emerges from an obsession with the human body: the vessel that provides life and encapsulates our personal story. I find many parallels between map and body, both visual and symbolic. The land is just as alive as we are—map lines are unique imprints, signifying movement and life flowing across the earth.”
Nikki Rosato
Portraits and Object
The artist through her works wants to express the intrinsic relationship between person and place, in fact the space and environmental factors have a gigantic impact on a person’s critical consciousness and personality. She makes portraits of family members, friends or clients. She uses as a base a map of a city dear to the subject portrait, this to emphasize how a place can shape a person.
Sometimes she uses her portraits as stencils to create a negative, in which the streets and rivers are white while the landmass comes alive.
Her last series is entitled Object, title to be understood bivalent both as a noun and as a verb. The artist says about the Object series: “I’m exploring the perception of object versus individual. Each piece creates a kaleidoscopic pattern where the object’s overall shape and its individual human elements challenge each other through visual flux.”
Sculptures
The artist also made three-dimensional sculptures using parts of road maps. For this sculptural pieces, she creates a structure with adhesive tape that acts as a mold and then shapes the map around the head, using a gel to stiffen the material. The entire structure is supported by an internal structure of small wires.
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Featured Image: Couple, Pittsburgh by Nikki Rosato
