Maps are one of the oldest forms of human communication even preceding written language, Maps and words define the world we live in and both represent the accumulated thought and labor of the past. In The Power of Maps, Denis Wood described a map as “a compilation of what others have seen or found out or discovered ...the things they learned piled up in layer on top of layer so that to study even the simplest-looking image is to peer back through ages of cultural acquisition”. The same can be said of written language.

Mappamundi is a Latin term that came to be used generically to mean any map of the world. In the medieval period these maps interpreted the world from a Christian viewpoint rather than a geographical one. Maps became religious icons depicting the world based on spiritual history and theology. The Australian Aborigines also create symbolic maps of the Dreamtime depicting with dotted circles and lines the trails of their totemic ancestors who sang their world into existence.

Both formats and philosophies have influenced these prints which make a visual poetic representation of the word/world. These maps examine the layers of the past inherent in our language today—this language that shapes the way we see our world.