Artists Challenge Traditional Cartography Through Counter-Mapping

The Artists Countermapping the World

Maps appear objective, yet they are built from choices that frame a particular view of the world. They are doubly instructional in the knowledge they share and in the ways they orient the viewer, offering a surface on which land appears ordered, bounded, and knowable.

A recent exhibition in New York showcases the works of late Venezuelan conceptual artist Claudio Perna, Chicano artist Sandy Rodriguez, and Dominican artist Firelei Báez. These artists take up cartography’s capacity for orientation and put it to work otherwise, turning maps from tools of classification into frameworks for examining movement, memory, and power.

As relief efforts following last week’s deadly earthquakes in Latin America highlight the politics of intervention, the work of these artists becomes even more significant. They embrace maps as a way to destabilize the truths we think we know, offering a counter-narrative to conventional cartographic practices.