map of nowhere

Grayson Perry. Map of Nowhere, 2008. Purple color etching from five plates, ed. 10/15. UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum. Purchased with funds provided by the Helga K. and Walter Oppenheimer bequest.

British artist Grayson Perry was awarded the Turner Prize for his provocative ceramic vases in 2003. A monumental etching recently acquired by the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts demonstrates Perry’s skills as a printmaker. It combines a diagram of the artist’s body with a medieval map of the world. The composition is riddle with allegorical references to the artist’s own identities and witty allusions to current social, political, and economic themes. Churches for Microsoft and Starbucks, and an Elizabethan portrait of a woman titled St. Claire, Perry’s alter ego/patron saint, are a few of the images that adorn this iconographic tour-de-force.