Opened Lands

Laurie Palmer’s projects generally involve long-term research, which eventually takes form in texts, objects, installations, and public projects. Many of her projects consider land as matter, as material that has been transformed by human intervention. She often researches resonant and politically charged sites—parks, vacant lots, urban gardens, mining sites—in which nature and culture merge.

Documenting a common strategy for transforming neglected city spaces, Opened Lands depicts urban gardens created by Chicagoans, some of them through guerilla action. Photographs of these gardens are shown abutted, creating a horizon line along the wall. This continuous band depicts most of the gardens in late winter, a dormant period before the growth of spring. Palmer has also created maps that provide additional views and stories about these places and their uses. When the work is displayed, visitors are invited to unfold and read the maps (exhibition copies of the artist’s originals). Opened Lands builds on strategies pioneered by conceptual artists in the 1960s and 1970s, who often used photographs and text to activate connections between the contemplative space of the museum and the world beyond its walls.

Both Opened Lands and the related Land Mass [Acquisition no. 2005.81a-o] consider vacant city lots as sites of potential energy. The Smart Museum commissioned these works in 2002 for Critical Mass [link to exhibition], an exhibition that sampled then-current activist and critically engaged art in Chicago.