Abelardo Morell
Born 1948, Havana, Cuba, lives and works in Brookline, MA
Map of North America, 1996, silver gelatin print, 12/25, Museum Purchase, 1998.39
Abelardo Morell can focus on the most ordinary things—the interior of a room, maps, and water—and transform them into something magical. His specific interest in maps may relate to his relocation from Cuba to the United States as a boy and his time spent in different American cities. His maps do not represent traditional maps, but instead evoke topography by recreating mountains, valleys, and lakes through the use of crumpled paper and water. In Map in Sink, Morell creates a map which intimates geography by way of the crumpled paper’s crevices and peaks within the domestic scale of a kitchen sink. In Map of North America, a body of water is suggested by a pool of water in the miniaturized paper landscape. These photographs were purchased from The 1998 DeCordova Annual Exhibition.
