Drawing ‘New Maps’ Critical Cartography and Ethnographical Enquiry Through Drawing Practice

How can new maps be created that deconstruct territorial borders and reevaluate drawing as a methodology? This practice-based research brings together ethnography and critical cartography through drawing practice to produce new maps that relate the formation of cultural and social identity. It challenges the conventional map in socio-political spheres, generating opportunities for hidden narratives and communities to be acknowledged. The new map becomes an open platform not only to make existing knowledge visible but also to generate new insights, to reveal political power and, perhaps, to articulate or mobilise emancipatory impulses. This process is a crucial aspect of research as it contributes to new knowledge. To create a new map, the practice of drawing is employed to find the intersection of these two disciplines and bypass the power relationships inherent in apparently objective scientific map-making. Ethnographic interactions in this research have been made into a creative map through drawing practice, rather than recording participants’ faces or voices. This anonymity has enabled participation by people who were reluctant to expose their identities due to their political status. It also helped to thoughtfully manage their informed consent.

This practice-based research examines certain contemporary drawing practices in terms of mapping, which is explored here through engagement with the Joseonjok people in New Malden, London. Joseonjok people living in London differ from other Joseonjok around the world as they are not only displaced from their ‘homeland’ but also have a particular relationship to the people of South and North Korea living in New Malden. As Joseonjok people in New Malden constitute a minority group, who are geographically far from their origin and less visible in their new environment, critical cartography through drawing could open up a space where they can bypass the difficulties of language, both in everyday speech and in official interactions. This project also reflects upon site-specific and ethnographic research relating to Joseonjok people and their environment, considering their socio-economic and political status. The project approaches drawing as a process-led practice, which allows for ways of seeing and understanding that can be incorporated into the practice of critical cartography to collect, creatively represent and reinterpret findings.

Locating this research within an interdisciplinary framework, these ideas are developed from the point of view of the artist and part of the project’s research method is to explore the potential of the ‘ethnographic-artist’.(1) By analysing my drawings as they are made, I address three research questions:

• How can practice-based research enable marginalised people to creatively assert their identity and claim their rightful place in society?
• How can the integration of the idea of critical mapping and drawing as a means of ethnographic mapping be considered methodologically as part of the research process?
• How can the resulting drawings serve as both an ethnographic map and a work of art?

These questions explore the potential of creative drawing practice to connect the disciplines of critical cartography and ethnography, reimagining drawing as a practice that can contribute new knowledge by embodying the theoretical and methodological approaches of both disciplines.

By addressing these research questions, this research makes original contributions to knowledge in three key areas. Firstly, it introduces a new approach to practicebased research by demonstrating how drawing can serve as a primary ethnographic research method. This research positions drawing as both a critical and creative tool, integrating it with critical cartography to challenge conventional boundaries between art and spatial representation. Secondly, it contributes to the field of critical cartography by developing TalkingMap, a participatory and subjective mapping methodology that prioritises migrant narratives over spatial accuracy. In doing so, it critiques the authority of traditional cartographic practices and proposes an alternative, process-based epistemology of space. Thirdly, this research offers a new perspective in subaltern and migration studies by repositioning migrants as active agents in defining their spatial realities. Rather than situating migration solely within policy frameworks, it foregrounds personal geographies and lived experiences, thereby expanding the discourse on identity, place, and belonging.

These contributions provide rethinking of mapping, identity, and space through the practice of drawing, offering new methodologies for both artistic and ethnographic inquiry.

(1)This idea derived from Hal Foster’s essay ‘The Artist as Ethnographer’ (1995).