Continuing the OAA Summer Sketches series, we're featuring a drawing series by Allison Cheng.

Description:

The Psychogeographic Series are mental maps reconstructed from memory, documenting avenues of travel and observations as a foreigner; it reveals a sense of place and knowledge of the city that cannot be acquired through studying tourist maps, guidebooks and statistics. Instead, it is a matter of inserting the body into the cityscape, engaging directly with the fabric and grain of the buildings, roads and bridges which compose the city. These imagined maps are about experiencing the traces of human inhabitation and the histories of cities through passionate observation.

“The Psychogeographic Map of Venice”, “The Psychogeographic Map of London”, and “The Psychogeographic Map of Amsterdam”, reflects an approach of engaging in metropolitan realities that was first termed by Guy Debord and the Situationists in 1950s Paris, in which individuals departed from their usual path of travel by following their instinct rather than logic. By going to places which were not on their mental map, they were able to distance themselves and evaluate the city from an anonymous perspective.  These individuals were also deemed as flaneurs, who wandered the city with the sole purpose of paying attention to it.

The process of creating the three 4 feet by 6 feet drawings involves concurrent mental and physical engagement. The drawing begins with broad strokes which parallel the major travelled routes, and progresses to increasing detail as memories of the city become more fluid. The various strokes which delineate spatial boundaries and trajectories of travel are created through drawing with charcoal, conte, and erasers of various textures and thicknesses.

Click here to see more Summer Sketches.