Joyce Kozloff, Battle of Vicksburg

Beginning in 1970, energized by participation in the feminist art movement, Joyce Kozloff became an originating figure of the Pattern and Decoration movement, exploring applied and decorative arts, especially visual cultures of the nonwestern world, as source and inspiration. During the 1980s, Kozloff concentrated on ambitious public commissions in the US and abroad, many in transportation centers, executed in ceramic tile and/or glass and marble mosaic. By the 1990s, maps had become the foundation for Kozloff’s private work, structures into which she would insert a range of issues, particularly the role of cartography in human knowledge and as an imposition of imperial will. Her map and globe works–frescoes, books, paintings, sculptures–image both physical and mental terrain, and employ mutations to raise these geopolitical issues. Her work luxuriates in the sheer beauty of maps, as incised diagram and reflection of our world.