ghost town was a participatory drawing project organized by Alexandra Grant that took place during the 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and curated by Alma Ruiz. For ghost town Grant invited the public to join her in illustrating a series of poems by the Guatemalan writer Vania Vargas, as an extension of her own studio practice. For the purposes of this collaboration, Vargas created an anthology titled “Cartografía de un pueblo fantasma” (“Cartography of a Ghost Town”), that mapped out dreams, real and fictive, across the urban landscape of Guatemala City. Grant used Vargas’s “Cartografía” as a linguistic plan or guide for the collaborative drawing that measured over 90 feet in length, from May 25th to June 9th, 2016. At it’s essence ghost town was a collective memory mapping project with over 600 participants, including artists and non-artists of great diversity.
The finished work ghost town is now in the permanent collection of the Museo de la Casa Santo Domingo in Antigua, Guatemala, where it was first exhibited from July 15 – August 17, 2017. The work will be on display at the new museum of the Casa Santo Domingo in 2018. www.casasantodomingo.com.gt/museums-en.html
For more information on the ghost town project, please visit us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ghosttownpueblofantasma/