by Priscilla Suarez Aleman, Saskia Krafft, and Ruhee Maknojia

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Conference of Longitudes is a series of drawings by three artists separated by thousands of miles and multiple time zones. The project seeks to promote a mutual exchange of ideas and cross-cultural understanding through the medium of drawing.

While conducting an exchange of ideas can be challenging during the best of times, the artists collectively decided to use the challenges of life during the time of COVID-19 to collaborate on a project intended to illustrate what a unified global conversation can look like even when individuals are separated by space, time, or self-imposed isolation.

Conference of Longitudes is less about individual drawings by individual artists and more about what can be envisioned and accomplished through a collaborative process in which the individuals must come together, while remaining separated, and adapt to each other’s individual artistic practices.

THE DRAWINGS

Conference of Longitudes began just as the COVID-19 virus attained pandemic status. Due to the variability and unknowability of the times, the artists were unable to meet in person. Instead, each would make drawings that capture their rich experiences and upload them to a shared folder online. The artists would subsequently print each other’s work, respond to them with a new drawing, and reupload as a way to communicate with each other without the constraints imposed by space and time.

​Because of the process by which the separate drawings were created, the artists intend for the series to be viewed in sequence. As the viewer moves from one drawing to the next, they will notice a story that begins to unfold in the transitions. Developed over a year in real time through video conference calls, emails, digital messages, and drawings, the story unfolds as the individual creations intertwine, entangle, and mesh with each other to create a common visual language.

STILL TO MOTION

Here the drawings come to life through paper cutouts, a shadow box, light, and motion.