Cappuccino with almond milk, no sugar.
Valeska CañasDisplaced and living on unceded land, in a settler colonial state, my understanding of the country of my birth included maps and the coffee blends and single origin labels stating, “from El Salvador”.
The work depicts a mind map of 2D mixed media images, collaged memories brought together in the digital form of an animated GIF ‘homepage’ uploaded to video plaftorm. The mind map allows for a kaleidoscope of ideas to be tethered down onto a cutting mat grid from which to navigate and launch onto three interactive multimedia 3D scenes. The grided backgrounds of these interactive 3D scenes allude to internal cartography and the ways to navigating an understanding of the 2D through different mediums and platforms: digital, photographic, pen sketch, memory and storytelling and collage. Puzzle-piecing-together alongside and through the topographic, the emotional and mental peaks and troughs traversed. Like mapping projections that distort and adjust through unseen equations - these 2D images are projected onto quintessentially seen café related imagery such as 3D coffee cups.
Please click once on the following 3D scenes to activate navigational tools for the interactive components. Depending on your device, use a mouse/touchpad or touchscreen to pan, orbit, zoom, recenter and change to full screen view.
Cañas, V. (2021). Kensington Mural [photograph], Device ILCE-6000 on 19/6/2021
Campo, R., Kraetzer, G. L., Rau, J. P. & Sonnenstern, M. V. C. (1858) General Map of the Republic of El Salvador. New York: Maximilian von Sonnenstern. [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668655/.
Valeska is Salvadoran-born cartographer and digital artist based on unceded Kulin land. Her practice interrogates maps as political documents and how they construct ongoing coloniality. Central through her practice is interest in the design elements of maps in terms of practical use and improved accessibility for the mixed ability user. Her work expresses the spatial as social practice. Valeska worked as a Coordinating Cartographer at Lonely Planet and has since expanding her practice into art and digital design for community-based organisations.