Off the Map is a collaboration between Venice-based artist Déirdre Kelly and New York based artist Xin Song, with Scuola Internazionale di Grafica and ART100 New York Gallery. The exhibition opens on 12 May, 2017 at SG Gallery, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica.
For the past six months, Déirdre Kelly, Xin Song, and curator, Michelle Loh have imagined and structured this collaboration via skype and email. During Song’s one month-long residency at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, she will make a site-specific installation, “Ocean Fantasy,” using diverse images and maps which Déirdre Kelly has compiled over a decade. The final work vividly depicts fanciful sea creatures intertwined with ocean waves. Juxtaposed with Déidre Kelly’s collaged nautical maps, the artists’ work challenges our assumptions of Venice as both a location and destination, asking why and for whom Venice exists.