Faculty Spotlight 2025: Patricia Belen & Oscar Oliver-Didier
FORDHAM FACULTY SPOTLIGHT 2025:
(In)Visible Cities
In this iteration of the Fordham Faculty Spotlight series, the work of professors Patricia Belen and Oscar Oliver-Didier have been highlighted. Patricia presents us with a series of colorful maps that ride the line between straightforward information systems of the City of New York and a more subjective suggestion on how these systems help guide our experience of the city. Oscar Oliver-Didier’s drawings of urban design projects intermixed with his cast of preparatory drawings and sketches also propose a way of navigating the city. The neighborhoods he draws brings the depiction of a city from a map to the actual street grid, while his doodle suggests something of the navigation of the city of the mind. The work of these two artists together give us a very human way to understand the urban sprawl that we all live in.
-Vincent Stracquadanio, Gallery Programmer
Patricia Belen (Graphic Design)
Art Map / Map Art uses public data, free and open source software, and code to map the museums and galleries in NYC. As a representational tool, the map raises questions about data sources and the cultural fabric of our city. As an interactive website, the map also challenges conventional attributes of maps, looking at how user intervention and randomized algorithms affect the visual characteristics. Through the website, different versions of the map can be generated by anyone, yielding unexpected visual outcomes (exhibited here in print). By building on a straightforward, digital map, Art Map / Map Art asks: What are the elements needed for a map to be read as a map? When does this map of arts organizations no longer appear as a map and instead look like art itself?
Oscar Oliver-Didier (Built Environment)
Sketching can capture a fleeting thought or be the outcome of an extensive inquiry. Sometimes we doodle because we’re bored, and on occasions we draw to explore an impactful outcome. This exhibit gives equal value to both approaches. The drawings included are a reflection of how at times our mind should be laser-focused, while it’s also okay for it to sometimes wander. The larger sketches are part of a lengthier process of exploration that helped grasp how the built environment could be shaped. The smaller doodles were drawn on napkins and meeting agendas (when a conversation starts to grow stale, one's hand inevitably wanders). In the end, both formats have the ability to reimagine our surroundings and inner-self... While simultaneously expanding the flatness of the paper.