UNLANDED
Giuditta Vendrame
(2021)
The installation UNLANDED (2015-2021) includes several works; the first is a water tank collected from the Mediterranean high seas as defined by the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) as a portion of sea where no state can claim sovereignty. The second is a fragmented world map: a modular piece of dark glass suggesting a new movement of plate tectonics from a perspective in the deep sea, most of which is yet to be discovered by human beings. The third and fourth works are world maps with blue gradients collaged from fragments of oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes cut from various atlases. Water is the main element in all works—a fluid substance that freezes, evaporates, and changes shape all the time.
Cartography is often made from the perspective of humans which is usually driven by an interest to conquer land. Collaging maps out of fragments of water, on the other hand, is a proposition to re-imagine the world from a less “terracentric” viewpoint—one that is less bounded and in constant motion. In these “humid images” of the world, the water thus becomes an instrument of de-territorialization and dematerialisation.