Counter Cartographies
Mapping Spaces of Belonging for the Unhoused in Philadelphia
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About Counter Cartographies
Counter Cartographies is a community-based art project working with unhoused shelter residents served by Bethesda Project. The project spatially maps residents’ lived relationships with the city of Philadelphia (its many paths, barriers, and refuges), and transforms those maps into collective art. The project’s artmaking draws on ethnographic mapping practices to challenge how power shapes spaces and their representations. Where mapping has historically been used to reify who belongs -- and who does not -- Counter Cartographies uses mapping to affirm belonging in the city, focalizing the otherwise latent geographies of Philadelphia that those experiencing homelessness navigate. The social and spatial maps informing the project's central art exhibits are created by unhoused individuals through guided map-making sessions and discussions, and provide insights into the support networks, movement patterns and urban negotiations that they engage with in Philadelphia. Our praxis centers around co-creation, working collaboratively with those experiencing homelessness to create art about belonging in the city of Philadelphia.
Stephen Corona, Divintae Williams, Alvin Fuggs, Frank Thompson and Ernest Ruben.
Marker and stickers on tracing paper (2025).
Overlaid maps of daily routes, transportation lines, pathways, places of shelter, places of support and of accessing services, places of danger and safety.
Through the course of this project, each resident creates a georeferenced overlay mapping their experience in Philadelphia. This graphic, however, is not georeferenced. In its intersecting and overlapping lines that brush up and morph and wrap against each other, it represents how maps -- even those thoughtfully made and represented -- cannot betray the full lived experience of the residents. So much of what was discussed in sessions highlighted implicit knowledge: intuitions built through months and years of navigating life, and at times homelessness, in the city. What can you decipher here?
