Shayna Rosendorff: What Lies Beneath

Like most journeys, Shayna Rosendorff’s work started with a map — in her case, a large-format map at the back of a dusty 1963 UNESCO book. Its yellowing page showed natural deposits of mineable minerals in Africa, such as nickel, manganese, copper, gold, platinum, and diamonds. Accompanying the map is this caption: “In view of the greatly increasing demand for minerals owing to the rising world population, higher standards of living, and the working out of many deposits, it is highly important that detailed surveys to determine mineral potential of new areas should be completed well before known resources elsewhere become seriously depleted.”

The caption tells an obvious story about blatant extractivism: Africa’s natural wealth will meet the world’s resource demand. Perhaps less obvious is the story that is told in the visual language of the map itself: besides the veins of rivers and the markings of minerals, the map looks perversely empty — a vast expanse of boundless abundance, readily available for the taking.

Maps often project objectivity, but they are not neutral. Rosendorff wondered how she might manipulate the visual language of maps. What is an image without a certain color? What is the landscape without its minerals?

Rosendorff checked the UNESCO book out from the library, set the large map on her desk, and opened up Google Earth on her computer. Using remote sensing data, she mined satellite images for sights and vistas, extracted tones and patterns, and smelted them into new amalgamations. By consciously reproducing the colonial practices that led to mangled minescapes scattered throughout the continent in the first place, she exposes violent resource exploitation in Africa.

The 1963 map was designed to locate places of wealth, but instead it marked places of future devastation. The mines, especially when viewed from above through satellite images, show no sign of any life, yet they