The Artists Countermapping the World

A Hyperallergic essay examines how contemporary artists use “countermapping” to challenge the apparent objectivity of cartography, highlighting recent New York exhibitions of the late Venezuelan conceptual artist Claudio Perna, Chicano artist Sandy Rodriguez, and Dominican artist Firelei Báez. The author contrasts these practices with four monumental 1910 wall maps at the Royal Museum for Central Africa near Brussels that chart Belgian colonial interests, including resource exchange rates, extraction pricing structures, and even assigned market values for enslaved people. The essay argues that maps are constructed through choices that can encode power and violence, and that these artists repurpose mapping as a medium for memory, migration, and resistance. It notes that the 1910 maps remain fixed to the museum’s walls under national heritage laws, now serving as a backdrop to displays of objects and resources acquired through colonial extraction.

Read the full article at Hyperallergic