Among these systems, one of the most subliminal and effective is the way the world is measured: maps, planispheres, charts, and other seemingly neutral tools tell a deeply partial and arbitrary version of reality.
An emblematic tool of this vision is the Mercator map. Since 1569, it has remained the most widely used and culturally embedded, despite its distortion of geographical proportions. This cartographic projection enlarges territories closer to the poles—such as Europe and North America—while shrinking those near the equator—like Africa, South America, and Oceania.
This technical detail is already an ideological program.
Maps are never the result of neutral perspectives: drawing the world is itself a demonstration of power and a colonial political metaphor. The Mercator map perfectly reflects the worldview of a Europe at the height of its colonial expansion.
In this way, the West represents itself as central, large, and dominant, while the rest of the world is compressed and pushed to the margins, symbolically downsized.
Accustomed to this view from childhood, we accept it as a given, without realizing how deeply it shapes our perception of global balance. Western privilege is inscribed in geography itself. All of this penetrates deeply into our imagination and conditions the way we relate to other peoples and territories.
Our system of representation amplifies the symbolic power of the West and minimizes that of the rest of the world.
Physically manipulating maps, distorting and decontextualizing planispheres, has been our way of questioning not only their reliability as geographical representations, but also the value system they embody.
We began with a two-dimensional vision —already subject to perspective distortions— and transformed it into three-dimensional solids, creating a double distortion: both formal and ideological.
These three-dimensional shapes enter the framed spaces of our photographs, reminding us that geography is not just a representation on paper, but also a physical experience we live every day.
The cracks, lines, and organic, imperfect surfaces that characterize these spaces merge with the maps and charts, acquiring a new cartographic quality: they appear as a spontaneous grid, in contrast to the imaginary lines we draw to divide and represent the world. The spaces become agents of what the maps have only attempted to do: impose a visual order on something that is, by nature, complex and constantly changing.
The six faces of the cube blend into ever-new combinations, creating a different geography —fluid and unstable— and suggesting that geography has always been subject to human manipulation.
The critical process this work suggests is especially relevant in a world that must face the consequences of centuries of colonialism and exploitation.
The borders drawn on maps are often the result of arbitrary impositions, decided by foreign powers indifferent to local realities.
The distortions in maps are not merely visual: they are symptoms of geopolitical inequalities, conflicts, and imbalances that still persist today.