Unconscionable map (a law set in stone) (2021)
Pandemic instructional floor signage (altered)
58 x 58 cm
Pandemic instructional floor signage (altered)
58 x 58 cm
Unconscionable map (a law set in stone)
"...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.“
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges writes “On Exactitude in Science” in the form of a literary forgery, describing a fictional empire so adept at cartography that they are able to make a map of the exact size and dimensions of the Empire itself. When future generations lost interest in mapmaking the massive maps decay and lie in tattered ruins across the empire.
An Unconscionable Map is accidentally discovered, turned over, outside a local supermarket in 2020, at the start of the pandemic. An indexical image of the ground beneath me at that time, the Calçada Portuguesa is captured perfectly as dirt residue. A red shadow is cast from the pandemic instructions 'wait here' (Espere aqui)
Holding residual temporal qualities of time, place and language, the work demonstrates itself as an Unconscionable Map, and also reflects back to us a series of gestures of movement, backflips and reversals. A head on collision with a period of great global upheaval speaks to us individually, or not, depending on our position within it.
Exhibition: uma nova poesia visual, ESTAÇAO, Cultural Association, Rua da Estação 3865-007, Canelas-Estarreja, Sep 2022