Jessica Mein: Topologies

Topologies, by Jessica Mein is a work commissioned by Alserkal Avenue that seeks to index, categorize and map occurrences and marks of life. Since January the artist has set out to capture surfaces and impressions of our neighbourhood through processes of rubbing, scanning, drawing, and photography. More than a thousand collected rubbings will be exhibited in her temporary studio on the Avenue.

Displayed together, they give the impression of a map, as imagined by Jorge Luis Borges that could continue to reveal itself until its edges are coextensive with the territory it depicts. The works will only be presented during Art Week, after which the artist’s process continues. Eventually all rubbings will be scanned, animated and compiled into a work of encyclopedic proportions. This is an abstract simulation, a double of the real that preserves in raw, yet exacting, impressions the nuances of place and time.