Country: Italy – City: Padua – Address: Via del Santo 26

Art, Cartography, and the Geopolitics of Care: An Encounter with Laura Canali

Description:

This event brings together art, cartography, and critical geography through an encounter with artist and cartographer Laura Canali, author of Limes. Through a public conversation, we will reflect on how artistic cartography can challenge dominant geopolitical representations and open up alternative ways of seeing borders not only as lines of control, but also as spaces of care, vulnerability, and relation.

The discussion will focus on the intersections between art and cartography, the politics of representation, and the idea of a “geopolitics of care”, asking how maps and artistic practices can respond to experiences of migration, exclusion, and border violence without reproducing extractive or securitarian gazes.

Following the conversation, participants will be invited to a guided visit of the exhibition Alter-Atlas of Borders: Sensitive Maps of Changing Worlds, featuring works by Bachelor and Master’s students that experiment with counter-mapping, sensory cartographies, and alternative border imaginaries.

The event is open to the public and aims to foster dialogue between artists, geographers, students, and non-academic audiences.

Main objectives:

To invite the public to discover how artists and cartographers use maps to tell different stories about borders.

To reflect together on borders not only as lines of separation, but as lived and sensitive spaces.

To discuss care, responsibility, and solidarity through artistic and cartographic practices.

To actively involve participants through conversation and an exhibition visit.

Event language: Italian

The event will be: Only in presence

Link (for online events): free to attend

Reference person: Laura Lo Presti, Tania Rossetto – Role or function: University professors – Reference organization: Museum of Geography, University of Padova

Those who organize are: Academics

Estimated starting time (local time): 5:30:00 PM

Expected duration: around 2 hours

Event program: it will be displayed here as soon as possible

GeoNight code: 2026232