Typus Terra Incognita

Imagine a map. Not just any map, but one woven with meridians resembling tangled threads. A map where Africa and Latin America are not simply places but beating pulses in synchrony. This is not the map you know. Its contours are unfamiliar, sketched by a bold hand unafraid to deconstruct the world, revealing a journey laden with tensions. Here, Brazil rises, at times, as the focal point of a reimagined cultural hemisphere.

Answers that elude books; questions that surface from the 17 notebooks Anna Bella Geiger created between 1974 and 1977, offering a broad, singular, and reflective cartography. To engage in a visual and intimate dialogue with Anna Bella’s work and ideas, I had the pleasure of curating an exhibition in 2022, in collaboration with Aural Gallery in Madrid, when, for the first time, all these notebooks were presented together. This unique library was accompanied by iconic and contemporary works deeply intertwined with them.

Maria Lago and Anna Bella Geiger share a close personal bond and had previously discussed the idea of a project for Familia Editions. Out of this creative exchange emerged Typus Terra Incognita, a work that invites us to hold this evocative, timeless book in our hands. The title is inspired by an anonymous Chinese map engraving from circa 1550, which Anna Bella engaged with in recent years and has materialized through her textile pieces “macios”, represented here through drawings. The book dialogues and connects with rarely seen materials from The New Atlas I and The New Atlas II (1977), brought to life with a carefully curated selection of previously unseen and unpublished images, both contemporary and historical, interwoven in a non-linear, non-chronological sequence. Among these works, we find The First World, or the Variables series (1970s), which also includes a contemporary reimagining. Notes and emblematic works such as Place of Action, Equations Series, Am. Latina (Amuleto, A Mulata, A Muleta, Latin America), Cultural Currents, Social Space of Art, and others also appear. Nearly fifty years later, this new edition, conceived in a vastly different historical-political landscape, remains a powerful testament to the questioning of power and ownership.

The special edition includes a “rolinho”, a distinctive feature of Geiger’s work where a page partially hides itself by rolling up—a stylistic inheritance from the Torah that unconsciously or intuitively connects to Anna Bella Waldman's Judeo-Polish origins. Two versions are presented, each composed of the world map containing the mythical typewritten text Social Space of Art (1977), juxtaposed with the same oceanic backdrop as Anna Bella’s redrawn figures, inspired by the imagery of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities depicted by Jean-Baptiste Debret.

Amid transparencies, frottages, and drawings, we encounter enigmatic equations, unfolding layers, and playful juxtapositions—such as those formed by three triangular shapes representing Africa, Latin America, and Brazil, resonating as echoes of shared identities. These elements take us back to the origins, something that resonates deeply within us and adaptable across contexts.

This “visceral” atlas teaches us how to trace paths between the intimacy of home and the vast cultural ocean surrounding us. It uncovers hidden layers in the very geography of our beliefs, navigating between the physical and the conceptual, between camouflage and raw truth. Formal coincidences transform into encoded messages, like that African flower that firmly spreads its petals despite existing in …Location Unknown.

In my mind, this volume will join its predecessors, together forming an imagined hemisphere, Adrift where each page holds a story yet to be fully told—De Rerum Artibus.

Susana Bañuelos ― columpio projects ― curator and cultural manager