Propositions to Progress: A Working Atlas of the Global South

Historically, maps have served as a panoptic technology, assisting imperial powers in governance, discipline, and control. In this exhibit, internationally renowned Filipino artist Cian Dayrit acts as a counter-cartographer, reclaiming mapmaking as an emancipatory activity.

Dayrit’s artworks, embroidered on textiles or painted over collages of colonial-era maps, plot the extraction of natural resources, land grabbing, and dispossession and displacement in his native Philippines. At the same time, their resistant lines summon new imaginaries out of the overlaps between places and memories.

Dayrit’s practice is critically and practically informed by the narratives of Filipino communities. Items exhibited alongside his artwork are the result of map-drawing workshops the artist has convened with rural, urban, and indigenous communities across the Philippines. Propositions to Progress invites you to engage in the collaborative endeavor to activate alternative territories from the ground up.

Cian Dayrit is an interdisciplinary artist exploring colonialism and ethnography, archaeology, history, and mythology. Dayrit subverts the language of the state, museum, and military to visualize the contradictions on which these institutions are built. He studied at the University of the Philippines.