Geographical and national territories are reshaped today by the effects of climate change as receding ice exposes new coastlines or floods alter waterways; at the same time, new territorial struggles and land grabs remap borders through aggressive warfare and colonial expansions. Maps, historically tied to imagining, shaping and claiming territories, have never been innocent tools for orientation, but today they represent new climate-formed geographies and territorial battles where nations and regions are reshaped by politics and aggression.

With their series of three maps, Shifting Perspectives, Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, and Huda Lutfi, challenge the classic Western perspective of how to look at, and how to draw, a world in flux. Drawing on maps from The Book of Curiosities and that which Pleases the Eye, composed during the later rule of the Fatimid empire in Egypt (909 to 1171 AD), these collaborative textile works deploy the beauty, perspective and abstraction of historic Arabic maps and adapt them to present spatial and social conditions. The elaborate historical maps place the source of the River Nile, and therefore south, on top: with this shift in perspective and emphasis, Bitter, Weber, and Lutfi work through the knowledges embedded in the Arabic maps to imagine how climate dignity takes shape and is spatialized in relation to changing geographical and political territories today. The maps, with master appliqué and embroidery techniques, were sewn by Tariq Al-safti, a traditional Egyptian tent maker.

The photographic series, Squaring the Circle focusses on contemporary Cairo and its rapid urban developments. Reflecting the transformation and loss of public spaces, these works create an empty space in the centre of the image to both challenge the restrictions on publicness and to open urban spaces of possibility.

Sabine Bitter, Huda Lutfi and Helmut Weber