Participating Artists: Katrina Chamberlin Melanie Daniel Michael & Alan Fleming Drew Hamilton Nancy Nowacek Carolyn Salas

The New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation is pleased to present Terra Incognita, an exhibition featuring the work of the 2012 Season II International Artist Residency Participants: Katrina Chamberlin, Melanie Daniel, Michael & Alan Fleming, Drew Hamilton, Nancy Nowacek and Carolyn Salas. The exhibition title is taken from a Latin term meaning “unknown land,” used by cartographers to denote on their maps regions not yet explored. The lure of the unknown is immense: this, after all, is the reason that we fall in love, send out starships and build bridges.

These seven artists set sail knowing that things will not be the same as they were at home. They are explorers fluent in the knowledge that much of life is a foreign language. Their work sets out to decipher this unchartered territory—physical and psychological, historical and present. They intentionally go out of their way each chance they have, embarking on unprecedented routes in an explorative search for an understanding of our most human limits and possibilities.

Some of the artists embrace their role as sommeliers of the city. They have familiarized themselves with the textures, designs and historical course of the urban landscape, only to ultimately defy the established layout in favor of their own. They can be seen scaling structures and scaling structures to size. Others embrace cultural and sociopolitical object hood, relying on a temporal map to fill in spaces with storied histories that both crave and hesitate to be told. Always covering new ground, literally and figuratively, these works are documentations of the unchartered, and a promise to return with tales of distinctive and poignant voyages of discovery.