Of This World – Envisioning Alternative Cartographies – PARALLEL

Visiting is free of charge:
August 18, 2021 – September 19, 2021
Tuesday – Friday: 2pm – 7pm
Weekend: 11am – 7 pm
Closed on Monday and on public holidays.
Capa Center
Curator: Lexington Davis
Exhibiting Artists: Yuxin Jiang, Glorija Lizde, Mark McGuinness, George Selley & Margherita Muriti, Shelli Weiler

Featuring a selection of recent work by emerging lens-based artists, this exhibition reimagines our geopolitical landscape through alternative practices of mapping. The included artists draw upon personal and political histories to trace the interconnectedness of subjectivity and geography. Probing both public and private zones, they examine how identities are continually negotiated through contact with space and place. Each artist approaches maps as living documents in constant evolution, subject to scrutiny and revision. Collectively, their work reveals how cartographic practices might foster new forms of knowledge and systems of meaning-making.

“I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.”
— Wisława Szymborska*

Maps are frequently accused of reinforcing the power of those who produce them. In the Western world, cartography has been inextricably tied to imperialism, with maps defining the limits of territories and asserting the legitimacy of borders. However, as a creative practice, mapping also holds the potential to disrupt commonly-held beliefs about the spaces we inhabit. It can highlight difference and subjective experience, drawing attention to the constructed nature of the world in which we live, and the social, environmental, and political relations that shape our everyday reality. Mapping—both in a literal and metaphorical sense—offers the opportunity to chart complex and overlooked terrain, revealing new layers of meaning and modes of interpretation.

Through their work, the artists in Of This World reimagine our geopolitical landscape by producing alternative cartographies. They draw upon personal and political histories to trace the interconnectedness of subjectivity and geography. Probing private and public spaces, their work explores how identities are continually negotiated through contact with space and place. Each artist approaches maps as living documents in continual evolution, subject to scrutiny and revision. Collectively, their work reveals how cartographic practices might foster new forms of knowledge and systems of meaning-making.

In the framework of Parallel’s Cycle 4 theme Changing Times: Art Facing a New World, this exhibition considers how art not only confronts a new world, but also how it can help construct one. The five artist projects presented reveal how the conditions of the future are already being defined in the present, which is, in turn, strongly informed by our collective past. Together this body of work allows us to see how alternative systems of meaning-making and, specifically, new cartographies prompt a reevaluation of perceived limitations and taken-for-granted beliefs.

Lexington Davis
curator

*Map: Collected and Last Poems, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak (Mariner Books, 2016)

Changing Times

PARALLEL is a platform connecting creative European photographic organizations, where the eighteen participant institutions from sixteen countries of the European Community select and mentor new artists and curators participating in the program and create opportunities to organize exhibitions to present their works. During its 2018-2021 cycle, as a member of the platform, Capa Center has been successfully contributed to organizing several programs and in August 2021, it will host the closing exhibition of the cycle: in two curatorial projects selected through open call works of 11 young artists will reflect on the buzzword of the final cycle, being valid also for our present age: Changing Times.

The other chosen curatorial project: A Forged and Delicate Future

A Forged and Delicate Future – PARALLEL

PARALLEL – European Photo Based Platform

Created in 2017, PARALLEL is a network of creative organizations that aims to facilitate cross-cultural exchanges between creators and institutions and to provide mentoring and showcasing opportunities across Europe. The large and diverse nature of this network ensures a wide geographical spread and provides fertile ground for fostering new dialogues, sparking fresh ideas, and helping to boost creativity. The work process is implemented in two phases in annual cycles: Creative Guidance — selection, tutoring, peer learning, and curatorship for new creators; and Exhibition Platform — a wide exhibition network engaging exhibitors, universities, and art schools. As one of PARALLEL’s seventeen participant institutions, the Capa Center has contributed to organizing several programs, including the closing exhibitions of the cycle, A Forged and Delicate Future and Of this World — Envisioning Alternative Cartographies. In these two curatorial projects, works by 11 young artists reflect on the final cycle’s guiding thematic framework Changing Times: Art Facing a New World. Using different media and creative strategies, these emerging lens-based artists explore how art can contribute to a more sustainable post-pandemic future. PARALLEL is supported by the European Commission’s Creative Europe Programme, and designed and led by Procur.arte, a Lisbon-based cultural association.