Q. This is a map of Afghanistan painted on a mattress by the artist Guillermo Kuitca. How is the use of a mattress in this work extending the artist’s narrative?

A. Quoting from the Hirshhorn museum’s exhibition materials from their 2008 show, Guillermo Kuitca: Everything,

“Since the early 1980s, the artist’s work has been characterized by recurring imagery, most notably spatial and mapping motifs. Central among these are images of theater sets and seating charts, architectural plans, road maps, beds, numerical sequences, and baggage-claim carousels, through which Kuitca explores universal themes of migration and disappearance, the intersection of private and public space, and the importance of memory.” 

A mattress is a deeply personal article connected with our most intimate, personal histories (the place where we sleep and dream is one of our most private and sacred – however, mattresses are also moveable and can be symbols of transience – think of the mattress in a flop house or institutional setting, for example). Painting a map of a country in deep turmoil on a mattress is a very effective way of personalizing all that has happened there. If this map were painted on paper, it would just be a map, but because it was painted on a mattress, the narrative is fundamentally altered. This is one clever way that artists use materials to expand meaning.