Lize Mogel

Artist Lize Mogel straddles the fields of art and cultural geography. For the last decade, she has created and disseminated “counter cartography,” mapping that challenges the mainstream narrative of a site or history and offers new understandings of social and political issues. She connects the real history of and our collective imaginary about specific places to larger narratives of global economies. Mogel uses conventional maps as readymades, appropriating them in order to examine the power relations they contain and to reconfigure them into new geographies. In so doing, she creates alternative histories of the places mapped, and subverts the idea that maps and information graphics represent “the truth.” She inserts her counter-cartographies into public spaces and distributes them via publications.

Why we love Lize:

• Lize co-edited An Atlas of Radical Cartography, which sought to unhinge our perspectives about the world and critique the power relations inherent in mapmaking

• She mapped unbuilt "ghost" highways and followed the flow of the Anacostia River through Washington D.C., encouraging visitors to tour the District's forgotten and underground sites

• Lize made New York City's unseen infrastructure visible with a talk titled This Picnic Stinks, held in a park that's on top of a wastewater treatment plant in Harlem