No maps are made to return is as on-going project which began in 2021.
What is proposed is the exploration of space and time trhough the maping of a trajectory made everyday (or several trajectories) in the course of 16 days. The project has been made in Lisbon and Stockholm.
I don't draw maps to return
In May 2021, a site specific project was developed for the Penelope Gallery, curated by Francisca Portugal.
"A site specific installation produced for the Penelope Gallery by the artist Leonor Sousa.
Inspired by the concept of border, the artist created a map which questions the corridor as a domestic space, creating lawless juxtaposed areas. Considering this condition as a nes space of endless possibilities, whoever steps on it is invited to contemplate a new place, not just physical but ontological
This map starts in the Lisbon airport where I was getting ready to move to London. Simultaneously, Leonor was sitting on the floor with her bags with her mind already drifting off to Copenhagen where she would live for one semester. While I drew. While I drew my route through respective bus rides in the south of London to the Tates, Leonor would draw Denmark's capital on her bike and flew to India.
The abstract interception of these concrete lines, happened when I visited Leonor in her studio. At the time, she showed me how she would register her daily routes on tracing paper. These would pile in a corner waiting for their inevitable use. I would look at her paintings and would project not only those routes but also her own vision of what she would like to see in them. "I don't draw maps to return", follows Leonor's painting practice of ideal architectural structures, located in between past and future ruins. A construction of a cartographic limbo and a subversive reality of political contexts to questions of the existence of geographic limitations or even the notion of national territories.
As the title hints, this map is a proposal for a journey with no expected return, appropriating Paul Preciado's idea of transition, shattering the act of travelling by leaving behind multiple frontiers. The public is essential to activate this process, its body's presence in the Penelope Gallery corridor space will dictate the ideologic and conceptual transformation in each of the participants. Ironically, the individual crossing to a place of no return can't be visibly distinguishable unless the map is consulted, leaving the ambiguous question of its function or even its veracity."
Written for the exhibition by curator Francisca Portugal, 2021