All cartography is political Yamandú Canosa’s Unstable Europe

This work is part of a series begun by Yamandú Canosa in the 1990s, in which he uses cartography as a narrative or to tell a story about the world. The image of a disintegrating physical wall, along with the colour red, add intensity to this large oil painting. It presents the map of Europe in a state of maximum fragility, a map that is distorted, fragmented and with some duplicated sections. Inestable Eu was part of the exhibition The Empathetic House in the Uruguay Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. As the artist explains: ‘Inestable Eu is a commentary on the current European situation, in which the confused cartography threatens to collapse, supported by points of maximum fragility. The entire structure of the map hangs from a single point on the top edge of the space. Above, the inverted map of Great Britain post-Brexit hangs on a wall. Down below, Greece is dripping, sinking.’