SHAYNA ROSENDORFF

UNMAPPING: CONTAMINATED REPRESENTATIONS

Unmapping: Contaminated Representations is a project that began in 2020. Lockdown forced the world to a halt, and I began exploring the continent through my computer on Google Earth. Alongside this, I recently found an old book compiled by UNESCO in 1963 that houses a map locating a large number of resources and minerals across the African continent. The preface for this collection is a mapping for ‘when the rest of the world runs out of minerals- it was necessary to know where to find them’. Drawing on this UNESCO publication, I set out to locate each of these resources from above on Google Earth - all of which became marked through a mine. Each collage houses a collection of the same type of mine across Africa, layered on top of each other to the point that one is unable to tell where one ends, and another begins. The combined maps point to the historical process of erasure along with the destruction of memory and the environment inherent to mining. What is the landscape without its minerals- and what is brought to the surface as a result of extraction

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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Shayna Rosendorff is a Johannesburg based artist and art commentator. Working in photography, sculpture, and drawing, her conceptual focus is the mined landscape and the politics of the representation of land and landscape in South Africa. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, runs Overheard in the Gallery, and in 2021 she was one of the winners of the BMW x WITS Art Project.

︎: @5haynaa
︎: @not_landscape_art