On Guillermo Kuitca's 'Untitled', 1992. (posted on 16/3/12)

Guillermo Kuitca, 'Untitled', 1989. Oil on vinyl covered mattress. Taken from the book 'The Atlas of Emotion' (Giuliana Bruno)

Cartography is increasingly becoming a very popular and central locus of contemporary visual culture, not only because artists are making maps -travel or subversive ones- but because ''... artistic endeavors are curatorially measured and exhibited as maps that chart the trajectory of a movement''.

In 1992, Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca, produced a series of works under the title 'Untitled'. The main themes underpinning Kuitca's work is the mapping of history and loss. In this particular series, the artist depicts imaginary maps by painting them on mattresses. The mattress' buttons link areas and territories. The maps emerge in the surface like a stained memory. Hence, the mattress becomes a living document of one's personal history; of what he or she is dreaming of during the night or of which memories recalls when he or she is going to bed. In Guiliana Brunos' words ''... the mattress was a witness. It absorbed a story, some event -perhaps too many events or not quite enough of them. Now, inevitably, it recounts the tale of what was lived, or unlived''. 

This project can be seen as a form of tender mapping. Not because visually it depicts a map. Rather, because it associates an object that symbolizes home and sleep with an image that in real life can not exist there, but emotionally does. This project is an emotional map because ''... travel and home has been in constant interaction''.


A perfect name for his 'untitled' works could be 'burning beds'.