Mapping and Contemporary Art (original) (raw)

If mapping is our most common operational metaphor today, there has been a related increase in the use of maps in art and attention from outside the art world is growing with new publications also on the rise. This article reviews aspects of this decades-long history and discerns patterns to the reception of this theme, suggesting that some revisions are needed – in particular a call for a wider cultural account than is often the case. Shifting epistemologies that consider art useful to cartography or science are discussed. This article therefore grapples with notions of what mapping in art has been and can be, opening out a history of definitions that have created expectations as well as regrettable limits, looking at who is mapping, and what is being mapped today, via contributions from artists. Keywords: Contemporary art, art exhibitions, mapping, cartography, maps as art, thematic exhibitions, art curating, Alighiero e Boetti, Autogena and Portway, Experimental Geographies, critical cartographies, actor-network theory, art theory, Aboriginal Art, Öyvind Fahlström, J. Brian Harley