CUT / PASTE

Cut / Paste is a collection of map collages created as part of a public workshop held at Portland State University in January 2025.

Maps abstract and simplify reality; collage invites participants to explore and challenge that assumed reality. Freed from the constraints of traditional cartography, map collages can disregard conventions, upset dominant narratives, or comment on political issues. By reducing maps to their symbolic elements, removing the original context, reassembling elements into new configurations, and then writing artist statements, workshop participants shared insights into their feelings, perceptions, and understandings of place. The resulting collages and artist statements illuminate the relationship between mental mapping and cartography, offering insights into how each influences the other.

Several map collages playfully subvert familiar spatial relationships in favor of new connections, such as Tatjana Beck and Anthony Heatherly’s The Storied Oregon Isles or Dianna Ferrell’s Multnomah’s Visionary Scenic Rivers. In Ben Clark’s Travellers Beyond Borders, animals borrowed from one map explore the terrain of another.

Other artists experimented with the aesthetics of map symbology. Andie Lafayette’s Rose tinted glasses leans into color, while Asher Flynn’s Existential Delineation Experimentation favors shapes. This approach is exemplified by Karin Waller’s hyperfocus on a singular map embellishment in I am but mad North by Northwest.

Many of the pieces in this collection are reflective. Some speak directly to current events or address cultural concepts, such as Hallie Liu’s Western Lore. Other pieces use maps to navigate the internal landscape of memory, such as Travis Anglin-Dodd’s INTER/state or Rachel Rudick’s The Basin of Reverie. Still other pieces explore people’s intimate and developing relationships with place, such as Aaron Menconi’s Carolina Islands or Rachel Springer’s Borders and Claims.

If current map theory considers maps as always in the process of becoming and never ontologically secure, then map collages take that perspective to the next level.

Thien-Kim Bui and David Banis, June 2025