Ana Vizcarra Rankin was born in Uruguay, raised in both South and North America, and currently resides in Wilmington, NC. She holds a BA in art history from Temple University and an MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Rankin makes research-based and perceptual art about mapping, data visualization, and our sense of being in and of the universe. The scale of her work ranges from monumental to delicate and diminutive, from subatomic space-time to global and cosmic perspectives. In a quest for balance, she is often drawn to alternative views of our surroundings: world maps with Antarctica at the top; planets made entirely of humanity; dark spaces filled with stars, surrounded by the constantly developing horizon. 

 

The Fleshplanets in this exhibition are maps of what is ‘us’ and what is ‘other,’ composite diagrams of how skin and environment are color coded, smoothed, groomed by the camera and print production. They are hyperobjects made of denuded people, places, trees turned to pulp and pigmented, consumed, recycled. They offer a multiplicity of worlds, each with its own reality and orbit. They remind us that in the extraordinary complexity of our known universe, our planet stands as the unique example of a living ecosystem. Fleshplanets document how humanity is continually in the process of defining what consciousness is, what is considered worthy and desirable or exotic, what is precious and what is garbage.

 

Rankin has exhibited extensively, and her work is held in numerous permanent collections, including Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Brandywine River Museum of Art, Uruguay Cultural Foundation for the Arts, Peoria Riverfront Museum, Brooklyn Art Library, and Print Council of Australia. Awards include a Project Stream Grant from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and funding from Creative Capital x Skoll, among others. Rankin participated in the first TrueQue Artist Residency in Ayampe, Ecuador, was a Barnes Artist in Residence in Umbertide, Italy, a resident artist at Liliput Experimental in Puebla, Mexico, and is the founder of BrobDinGnag International, a curatorial exchange program focused on diversity and inclusion.