In 1943, Joaquín Torres García drew Nuestro Norte es el Sur, his iconic upside-down map of South America. It proclaimed, visually, what Torres García had written years earlier in his manifesto School of the South—“For us, there must not be a North, except in opposition to our South...This correction was necessary; because of it we now know where we are.” This image of the upside-down map has since been appropriated by cultural commentators across the globe, from Australian Stuart McArthur’s Universal Corrective Map to American Larry Wilmore’s backdrop on his television program The Nightly Show. Though the tone varies, the underlying message is the same—to position oneself in opposition to a global norm.

In Ana Vizcarra Rankin’s work, the inverted map encompasses a myriad of meaning. Her layered, scumbled paintings touch upon questions of heritage, environmentalism, and political intervention. They are simultaneously universal in scope and profoundly personal. Vizcarra Rankin, unlike Torres García, is not defining where she is in the world, but rather presenting a multivalent search for orientation—physical, cultural, phenomenological. Her paintings are reminders that maps were once, first and foremost, a tool for wayfinding, and starry skies the source of cardinal direction. Maps can be most precious when we are lost, rather than as a means of declaring where we stand. They can subvert hierarchies, but also offer some semblance of order.

Ana Vizcarra Rankin’s works imagine an inverted world, and invite us into explore possibilities rather than pursue certainties. They share the open-ended spirit of José Agustín Goytisolo’s melodic stanza:

Todas estas cosas había una vez cuando yo soñaba un mundo al revés

[There were all of these things once when I used to dream about an upside down world]

—Kerry Bickford