Abstract

A long-standing relationship between the map and visual art is continued today by a number of contemporary artists whose work uses a variety of cartographic concepts and strategies. This thesis focuses on three artists, Sandy Rodriguez, Firelei Báez, and Shuvinai Ashoona, who address and undermine the map as a technology of colonial power. Brought together for the first time here, these three artists accomplish a decolonial subversion of the map–as an object complicit in past and present processes of colonization. Drawing on the work of scholars from geography, Black studies, decolonial studies, and art history, this thesis addresses, in detail, how each artist’s work pushes back against the assumed authority of the map.