Beijing/Hong Kong —
In the top corner, there’s a very small Star of David. On the center right side, the number 51. Near the center, a pentagon. Squint and you might notice a teeny-tiny series of music notes amid a busy grid. And, wait, is that the US Capitol missing its dome?
British artist Gareth Fuller doesn’t make the kinds of maps you’d find in an atlas. They’re not done to scale and don’t include street names. He calls them “mind maps,” and they’re his artistic representations of time spent walking around and exploring cities — in this case, Washington, DC.
In an age of Google Maps, with many using their phones to navigate new places, Fuller believes people have lost their sense of discovery. That’s why he began doing these large-scale pen and ink drawings, which he calls his “personal geography.”
In his DC work, there’s an itsy-bitsy PBS logo, because the broadcaster has its headquarters in the nation’s capital. There’s also a pattern inspired by the trademark breezeblock ceilings of the DC metro system, flowers to represent the National Arboretum, and the Potomac River cutting through it all. That number 51? It’s a shoutout to the movement that wants to make the District of Columbia into the 51st state.
