Upstairs Map (2021- )

“Upstairs Map” takes as a starting point the upstairs happenings among women in Al Balad, to reimagine the potential of a map in delineating power and knowledge structures. While “underground” often connotes the independent or experimental, “upstairs” remains mostly inaccessible and mythical to those outside the community. In a contemporary context, moreover, the emerging art scene in major cities often returns to the literal sense of being underground or upstairs due to their affordability and relatively loose regulations. The resulting series of maps hopefully allow shifts and inherent structures to converge in a flattened image. Exposing junctures between reality and representation, the project also reflects on the historical nature of all knowledge, including maps, archives, machines, and other seemingly objective constructs.

An amalgam of scientific measuring, sociocultural history, and disciplinary traditions, cartography serves to inform and continuously shape the knowledge and perception of a place. The project proposes to reveal historical junctions of events, ideas, and relations by reconfiguring their usually abstract and intangible connections on maps. The objective is to study the dynamic structure of a society historically and geographically, reversing the constructed picture of geographical features into its multiple alternatives and potentials.

Project funded by Art Residency, Al Balad, Jeddah 2020.