ARTnews Top 200, 2004

Historically, the map of the world plays an ambivalent role; it is used both to inform and to exercise power. On its surface, regions coalesce into a unity, a whole, and without it, international exchange – whether of ideas or commodities – would be impossible. In parallel, a world map confirms the world order that conforms to the ideas of the cartographers that made it: borders are drawn, regions are named and set in relation to each other both symbolically and in terms of power politics.

In her series World Map Project, Antonia Hirsch addresses the map as an often random graphic abstraction of the world, which at the same time controls economic and social realities. For her artwork ARTnews Top 200, she used a list of the most important art collectors compiled by the U.S. journal ARTnews and made the size of the countries on the map proportional to the number of art collectors living in them, but mirrored and made of 23-carat gold leaf. The map thus created only depicts the world fragmentarily and distorted, although as an image of the commercially determined art market, it probably contains more truth than a map, which depicts the world is as an unfractured whole existing untouched by any political borders and differences between rich and poor. (JB)