The Houston-based artist Rick Lowe has spent much of his adult life trying to reconcile his inner artist with his inner activist. Inspired by a student who asked him: ‘If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?’, in the 1990s Lowe shifted from painting to social practice art with a focus on community development. The short documentary Mapping the Unknown is centred on Project Row Houses – an initiative Lowe founded in 1993 to transform a series of small, dilapidated houses in Houston’s Third Ward neighbourhood into art galleries and housing for resident artists.
Through Lowe, Rafael Salazar Moreno, a Spanish-born director based in the US, highlights how the artistic pursuit of aesthetic beauty can be harnessed for practical ends. He also highlights the ongoing story of Houston’s Third Ward, which, once partially demolished and abandoned, now sees its longterm residents faced with removal through gentrification. Mapping the Unknown is part of the US National Gallery of Art’s short documentary series West to East, which chronicles ‘contemporary artists and the connections between their work, their communities, and the nation’.
