Léirsceáil

Mapping is a compelling and multifaceted act, at once an instrument of colonial dominance and an archive of fleeting landscapes, an imposition of order on the fluid and unknowable. It distills the restless environment into a form we can possess, yet it remains an aperture through which we engage with geography, a cipher unlocking our subjective experience of place and space.

The Irish word for map, “léarscáil” (leːrʲsˠkʲeːlʲ), offers a poetic resonance, translating roughly to “clear projection” or more directly, “show-shadow.” This phrase evokes the image of an impression cast by light - a fleeting silhouette of our cognitive grasp of terrain and territory. Mapping becomes an act of filtration and reflection, a cyclical exhalation of understanding, digested and reshaped by human perception. It holds the potential, when approached with care, to enrich our intrinsic capacity for communication - a foundational element of human culture.

Through this body of work, I have sought to reimagine the mapping of our city, engaging with processes that harness the ephemeral interplay of light and shadow. These explorations aim to chart not only physical spaces but the atmospheric and emotional contours that inhabit them, offering new visual lexicons for familiar geographies.