As part of its collaboration with the second edition of BIENALSUR, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) is currently hosting a residency project by Paola Monzillo whose artistic practice echoes the ongoing exhibition’s program about materiality in contemporary art.

Trained as visual artist and architect, Paola Monzillo nurtures a passion for cartography. Moving mainly between collage, drawing and installation, the artist sets out to disrupt with her works the supposed neutrality of maps and images, while investigating issues linked to territory, history and representation.

Tapestry, Footprints in the Territory consists of a handmade tapestry made with maps of Latin American cities. The designs allude, on the one hand, to the iconography used in pre-Columbian textiles, and on the other, to the urban morphology diagram derived from the Spanish legislation of the Laws of the Indies. The work encompasses a debate on the dominant discourses, the appropriationism characteristic of cultural conquests and the myths around our own origins and identity.