Unconscionable map (a law set in stone) (2021)
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

​With a theme of the environment and sustainability, a symbiosis between the artists work sustains a diverse but consistent content. A visual poetry of small fragments are extracted by diverse cultures and practices, creating a sensibility that allows us to make small records which will be attached to our memory, inadvertently. It is these small records that allow us to heal, to mourn, with a certain nostalgia, where destruction can represent a new creative ecosystem.
(Adapted from exhibition text)

Exhibition opening: 08 SEP 2022
Continues 09 - 22 SEP  from 15h-19H

Ariana Jouhand /  Barbara Palandeng / Catarina Vilaça / Isabelle Louise / Nina Fraser 
ESTAÇAO Cultural Association, Rua da Estação 3865-007, Canelas-Estarreja

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