Airport & Road Signs, Digital drawings, 2008 – present

These digital drawings examine the specificities of global travel for immigrants and tourists. I am interested in the airport as a place that symbolizes personal metamorphosis, and which simultaneously contrasts and conflicts with the realities of mass tourism, immigration, border controls and security.

In Airport Signs (Mosaic Pictograms) and Airport Signs, a series of digital drawings and cut vinyl and aluminum wall and road signs, I have been collecting and reconfiguring airport and road signage to play with narratives of personal and public security. An abandoned suitcase is a great signifier of all our greatest fears in the public realm. And, the familiar male and female figures which are universal symbols outside restrooms, become ‘other’ with a change in costume. On their own, these signs may be innocuous, but when placed together, they can create a sense of uncertainty and unease, as informed by our culture of fear.

The series Airport Signs (Mosaic Pictograms), are mosaic drawings comprised of many small abstract photographs. My intention with this project is to make any deeper reading of these images impossible, even as the mosaic format invites further assessment of the image’s meaning.