Mapping Meaning

›› www.mappingmeaning.org

In 2010 Caballero founded Mapping Meaning. This ongoing project brings together artists, scientists and scholars to explore questions of mental, social, and environmental ecology. Inspired by a photograph from 1918 depicting an all-female survey crew, Mapping Meaning supports the creative work and scholarship of those working at the edges, margins and ecotones.

Through experimental workshops, exhibitions, and transdisciplinary research, Mapping Meaning promotes a radical reconsideration of the role humanity plays in a more-than-human world. Five-day workshops take place biennially in the US American West. Selected women come from across the Americas representing a wide diversity of perspectives and disciplines including: visual art, geology, American Indian Studies, entomology, film, ecology, architecture, American Studies, dance, creative writing, visual anthropology, geography, GIS–land surveying, ethnobotany, permaculture, business, civil & environmental engineering, and folklore.

In a deeply fragmented and disciplined-based world, Mapping Meaning creates a space to encounter divergent approaches toward “surveying” human, ecological and technological landscapes, and ardently resists oversimplification.

Minidoka Project, Idaho 1918, Photo from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, of the U.S. Department of the Interior