What Is and What Was is an artwork by Canadian artist Jackie Partridge created in 2018. The installation features a simple yet thoughtful arrangement: four hand-cut atlases placed on a wooden table, surrounded by four wooden stools measuring 14” x 17.75”. The table itself is 46” x 42”, large enough to hold the atlases while still inviting a sense of closeness among the viewers who gather around it.
What is and What Was
The piece encourages participation. Visitors are invited to sit at the table, open the atlases, and explore their pages. As they turn the pages, they discover that the maps have been carefully altered: houses are cut away, leaving gaps that speak to absence, erasure, and change. These cut-outs transform the atlases into layered objects, where what is missing becomes just as important as what remains.
By using atlases of North America and Canada—objects already in a state of slow obsolescence as digital maps take over—Partridge highlights the tension between permanence and impermanence. Maps are meant to provide a sense of stability, yet they are constantly outdated by shifting borders, developing neighbourhoods, and changing landscapes. The found object of the atlas carries its own history of use and expiration, and the hand-cut removals amplify this instability.
What Is and What Was reflects on memory, place, and transformation. The work asks viewers to consider how the landscapes they know are always in flux: houses are built and demolished, communities grow and change, and maps no longer reflect the lived reality of the land. Sitting at the table, the viewer becomes part of this reflection, turning the pages and encountering the tension between what has been and what is left behind.
At its heart, this artwork is about presence and absence, inviting contemplation of how we record, erase, and remember the places we inhabit.
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