Agnieszka Kurant

The Maps of Phantom Islands are a collection of fictitious islands catalogued by Agnieszka Kurant. They came into existence as cartographers’ errors or else were deliberately invented by explorers who did not want to disappoint the rulers who had financed their exploits. According to the artist (who had previously created a library compiled exclusively from books that existed only as a mention in other books) the imagined islands are ‘ghost capital’, whose economic value has repeatedly came into play in history, affecting political decisions. Kurant’s work can be interpreted as related to 20th-century conceptual art, a trend where it was the artist’s brilliant concept rather than the manual craft on display that was more important as artistic currency.