re-tracing: explorations in counter-cartography (2021)

5 overlaid maps drawn on transparent paper

Made throughout residency with ArtsUnite

For this residency I decided to work with maps and memory. I came to Canada 6 years ago and am not able to go back home in the foreseeable future. With my upbringing in the post-war Iran, and also being an immigrant to Canada, I have been taught to embrace nostalgia and melancholia. I have flirted with feelings of regret and fomo all my life and will always be. This residency for me is a start of what seems to be a long research project. An attempt to map memories and places that I am not able to walk on anymore or even if I can, trying to map its relevance with the passage of time. I continue on my journey of making useless art in an attempt to find meaning in some aspects of it. Maps are always made and used for a reason. Reasons like situating someone, navigating in a space, etc. The user of the maps, activates the maps by passing through/over the places that those maps show. But what is a map good for if you can’t use it? What does a map do if it is not accurate at all, and it is incomplete? What do a series of incomplete and inaccurate maps do when they are overlaid on top of one another? I have been trying to pose these questions in my research and find some answers for them, and it has been very tough and at points unfair, to find an answer to these questions.