Darlene Charneco’s layered mixed media models and tactile maps explore ways of seeing our human settlements, communication networks and communities through a biological lens and as part of a larger organism’s growth stage. Clusters of houses sharing or sequestering resources and shorelines are pondered as sustainability experiments within imaginary laboratory or field observations . With playful shifts in scale perception, she strives to surprise and re-orient herself and the viewer into contemplation of the various interactions and types of symbiosis (parasitic, predatory or mutually beneficial) that we are continually co-evolving with other species and the living surface systems around and below us.
“As we become more and more aware of our interconnectedness there is both hope and responsibility in the power of the individual to affect change. With the gradual proliferation of tools to view and simulate cumulative effects of our individual behaviors, one of our largest challenges will be to learn to live with the Big Picture in our daily lives…and to use this knowledge to better inform the choices with which we create our joined future.”
