Exchange Place Map

Jersey City, NJ - 1999

Set on the station platform for a new light rail system, this abstract bronze relief map is based on a concept from the surrealists writer Jorge Luis Borges' On Exactitude in Science:
“...in that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that…the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire…The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been,…delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars.” 
Bronze tiles of my map are set on the platforms of the six other stations of the entire light rail system, mapping the exact area that would be encompassed by this central map were it to be extended to the other stations at its present scale. 

In line with Borges’ thoughts, my map too will someday be a “Tattered Ruins”