About

Supported by the generosity of the Hilgos Award at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Katy Niner grew her research focusing on the late period of the late sculptor Marisol—the work she produced while living with Alzheimer’s disease—into the Marisol Map of Chicago.

By producing this interpretative guide to Marisol’s imprint on the city, Katy hopes to provide a more nuanced, enduring portrait of the artist, in counterpoint to the obscurity sublimating her legacy, obscurity cast by the silence and the stigma enshrouding the disease.

The map is an invitation: to imagine Marisol and her work, on view, in public; to teleport back to a time, decades ago, when art was most acutely experienced in person, not on screen; to travel through memory, fragmented yet profound. Through historical excavation, the sites recall events and episodes indicative of the singular artist and her layered view of the world. Many of the pieces referenced currently live in storage, which makes the map less about locations, more about relationships and encounters.

The guide addresses Marisol’s absence by invoking her presence through her associations with other seminal artists like Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol. Visitors are guided through a concise selection of sites, with Marisol as the through line connecting featured works. By asserting her historical presence within public spaces, in spite of the curatorial sidelining of her work, the map gives people living with Alzheimer’s a sense that even if not currently visible, artists living with Alzheimer’s continue to contribute to aesthetic dialogue.