Emplaced Distances

ABSTRACT In the Sardinian artist’s Maria Lai’s works, Geografie and Geogafie Spaziali, she depicted the cosmic pathways of the Sardus Pater, using a cartographic representation of one of the island’s most popular legends. One of these works’ key features is the use of embroidery techniques learned from women of her village. She considers the Sardinian territory not only an object of representation but as an expressive medium of her work and a fertile space that generates new worlds. I argue that we can draw on Maria Lai’s work to conceive a particular form of deep mapping through which to explore the territory through its imaginative dimension. For the purpose of this article, I intend to describe how, inspired by Lai’s works, I built Emplaced Distance, a map of Cape Town through the Sardinian territory.