Shona Neary / Sketchy Shona
A tattoo on an orange opens a larger idea about temporary matter, shared cultural knowledge and who gets to hold a community’s map.
A mark on a surface that changes
I tattooed this small architectural drawing onto an orange. The image is a test, but it holds a question I want to keep working with: what happens when a map is placed on something that will not last?
I am imagining drawings of routes, meeting points and cultural spaces transferred onto fruit, leaves, fungi and other living materials. Their surfaces would change and decay as the work was seen. The image would not pretend that a community can be frozen in one picture.
What can remain in people’s hands
Alongside those temporary surfaces, I want to explore an open-source digital map made with the people whose independent art scene it describes. It could hold shared places, resources and connections, with decisions about what is visible remaining with the community.
The physical work would disappear while the digital structure could continue to be used and changed. I am interested in that difference, but I do not think software is automatically permanent or neutral. It needs people to maintain it, and it should not turn the relationships it records into material for outside extraction.
The work brings tattooing, organic decay and full-stack software into one material question: how can a culture leave a trace, share what helps it live, and keep authorship of its own map?
Images from this journal record
A map with a short life / orange / tattooed map study Artwork: Sketchy Shona (Shona Neary).