Description:
Collage that resembles a map, mostly off-white in color, showing a small part of Africa. This is indicated by the word UGANDA, written in gray near the center of the composition and numerous towns and cities, whose names are written next to red dots. These red dots are connected by meandering, road-like red lines. Four blue lakes are scattered near the center and upper right of the composition, the biggest of which is in the lower center of the composition. Butterflies of varying sizes and colors are affixed to the collage, scattered within the lakes and along the red lines.

Label Text:
From the exhibtion Jane Hammond, Digital and Analog, February 1 - May 29, 2022
In 2004, after watching hours of aerial footage of the Iraq War, Jane Hammond had a dream that would later develop into an artistic project spanning over a decade. In her dream, a gathering of butterflies alighted on a map of Iraq with no political borders. The series that developed from this vision highlights small cities located within sites of conflict or unrest.

In this exquisite map of Uganda, butterflies, not bombs, descend and reach land. The map’s hand-drawn pencil labels suggest that the human designations of cities and nations are themselves as impermanent as butterflies. As timeless landscapes and ephemeral butterflies encounter one another in Hammond’s work, the ancient and the temporal, the dangerous and the delicate, collide.
Adele Gelperin ’19, Education Fellow, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum (Summer 2017)

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+2006.18

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