The Iniva Creative Mapping Project considers how and why contemporary artists from across the globe are opening up the concept of mapping in imaginative and unexpected ways. It is an opportunity to explore the potential of new cartographic languages to deepen our understanding of identity, place and power and to reflect on the multiple spaces we inhabit: ourselves, our bodies, our communities, our cities, our nations, our earth.
At the beginning of the 21st century, geographic information technologies show us extraordinary levels of detail about the physical world we inhabit. However, their objective authority can distract us from their subjective limitations; satellite-based maps mask racial, linguistic or religious concerns, and show us little about the social, emotional and political worlds we inhabit.
The Iniva Creative Mapping Project asks how we can begin to map these worlds. Artists work with different groups to create new maps, maps that reflect something of our daily lives. Previous mapping projects have considered ‘how can we map our senses?’, ‘who makes up my personal cartography?’, while others create ways to tag the world with ‘geograffiti’. Each project provides a unique reconsideration of mapping as well as a different world to think about how we look at the world we live in.