On The Parallels of Latitude will be a show of drawings – both two and three-dimensional – utilizing a range of materials including paper, graphite, string, clay and ceramics. Ostensibly it is inspired by cartography and will involve research into the history of maps. Shu-Mei will also borrow some formal elements of historical maps. But her main interest in them is not their beauty (although she does think they are amazing). Instead, she is concerned with the problem or challenge of trying to make the untamed three-dimensional world fit into our highly ordered, mathematical, and conceptual systems. She is ultimately interested in the fact that our “will to order” inevitably distorts. This leads her to think that anything that the mind projects is a gross distortion of what really is. This bittersweet exhibition will consist of musings about the reality that we will never and can never know.