Featured Artwork: Mappamundi"
When we hear the word, “map,” we inevitably are led to
a “modern” Western conception of cartography, stemming
from a colonial legacy, that grasps the confines and shape of the
planet for expansion and control. Yet, throughout history, maps have
served other functions. In fact, Western cartography, often assumed
as “universal,” is actually useless in many cultures in
which maps are not a depiction of geography, but representations of
their relationship with their environment, often combining notions
of time, displacement, space and cosmology in a fluid manner that
Western culture is not used to.
My version of a Mappamundi is a twelve-piece jigsaw puzzle
globe in which each piece is an example of a non-Western or pre
15th century Western map recreating an area of the world unfamiliar
to that culture. For example, a Marshall Island’s sailing chart
recreates the major freeways and airports in the United States.
An Aztec map that originally depicted the journey from Aztlan to
Tenochitlán, the epicenter of their civilization, now recreates a
modern day Europe with the euro as the epicenter of their civilization.