Caterina Pecchioli

We are happy to announce that Caterina Pecchioli has received Thami Mnyele Foundation award and will stay at the residency in September to develop the presentation of the project, 2749 Social Cartography: The Photo Archive of Decolonial Ecology, which will be on view from 17 to 20 September at the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The research will be presented as a “project room”, including two of its main outcomes: a textile artwork and a digital cartography.

2749 Social Cartography is an ongoing international art project by Caterina Pecchioli that connects climate change, memory, and colonial history through a speculative vision of the Earth in the year 2749. Using photography, textile art, and digital mapping, the project creates a “social cartography” as a living archive, bringing together historical images, personal photographs, and satellite maps to form a new kind of world atlas.

More about the project

Central to the project is The Photo Archive of Decolonial Ecology, a collaborative and evolving archive developed with different communities, including Indigenous and diasporic artistic groups across Philadelphia and Rotterdam. In Rotterdam, a workshop was held this spring at the Depot in collaboration with the Thami Mnyele Foundation, bringing together visual artists and participants with different life stories and backgrounds.

The Archive focuses on different ways of relating to nature and the environment, bringing together decolonial visions and knowledge, testimonies, practices of care and resistance, rituals, memories, and images of changing landscapes. It functions as a collective resource that can continue to evolve and inform future artistic outcomes. It explores human and non-human relationships across different cultures and examines the interdependence between environmental crisis and human actions, highlighting the connections between histories of colonialism and contemporary ecological challenges. Archives and cartographies, traditionally associated with forms of representation and power, are here approached as tools for relational practices, reappropriation, and collective re-imagination.

Textile development TextielLab @ Lilliene Makino

One of the main outputs is a large textile artwork, a world map of the future, emerging from layered photographs of the Archive: images of colonial exploitation, environmental activists, disappearing landscapes, everyday life and recent crises like the Covid-19 pandemic. Through the textile technique, each thread contributes to the final image, making visible the interdependence between human actions and the environmental transformation. The textile was developed in collaboration with TextielLab in Tilburg.

Still of the digital cartography archive

The Archive has also developed into an interactive digital cartography, created in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Geomatica CIRCE at Università Iuav di Venezia. The photographs are situated within the map of 2749 through both real and imagined geolocation data, bringing different temporalities into coexistence.

The speculative cartography set in 2749, in which the continents have been largely transformed by submersion resulting from rising sea levels, no longer divided by nation-states, is inspired by the legendary Philadelphia Experiment - a story associated with the manipulation of space and time. Created through a combination of speculative approaches and climate change projections, this image offers a space for critical reflection on contemporary geopolitical dynamics, territorial conflicts, and the environmental transformations driven by dominant forms of human activity.

The project focuses on Venice, Rotterdam, and Philadelphia, connecting three cities shaped by water, vulnerability, and resilience. By bringing together artists, scientists, and experts in architecture and urban planning, it explores possible futures for these cities and for the Earth in a changing climate.

Through this combination of art, science, community memory and knowledge, 2749 Social Cartography invites visitors to imagine new ways of mapping and living our shared planet. Placing past, present, and speculative futures into dialogue, the project seeks to foster new forms of shared imagination and collective action.

Credits

A project by Caterina Pecchioli with the curatorial support of Alessandra Saviotti.

With the artistic support of Amy Diaz-Newman.

The research project is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2025, promoted by the Directorate-general for contemporary creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Co-funded by the 4th Century Center Research and Design Fellowship (AFS) in Philadelphia. 

Cultural partners: Abington Friends School (AFS), Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Sale Docks, Thami Mnyele Foundation and Università Iuav di Venezia.

The Photo Archive of Decolonial Ecology includes contributions from: 

Jefrey Alper, Rémy Alper, Razia Barsatie, Kristin Brown, Pauline Burmann, Fifth World Collective, Adam Cooper-Teran, Sean Cornelisse, Noemí Cortés, Neida Crespo, Rafael Damast, Dragos Dascalu, Fitri DK, Mara Facon, Virginia Friedman, Lisa Heinis, Khalil Jimenez, Paige Johnson, Natalie Kovalenko, Sarojini Lewis, Magali Luna, Shavis Luna, Kelly Makino, Lilliene Makino, Kameliya Markovska, Catherine Mattingly, Anne Medrano, Jackson Medrano, Glorivette Mendez, Sithabile Mlotshwa, Helen Mogul, Helene Mogul, Linnemore Nefdt, Sofia Paredes, Joyce Pennekamp, Vladislava Petrova, Michelle Piergoelam, Edgar Ramirez, Dorene Reggiani, June Reggiani, Falkona Rexhepi, Alessandra Saviotti, Ruby Schumm, Sally Selman, Olivia Sharon, Wheatley Spence, Molly Taylor, Muhammad Yankowy.

Special thanks to Marco Baravalle, Caterina Balletti, Pauline Burmann, Ludovico Centis, Adam Cooper-Teran, Amy Diaz-Newman, Virginia Friedman, Andrea Garcias Espinal, Ändrew Harrison, Lisa Heinis, Filippo Magni, Martino Marangoni, Massimo Mazzanti, Stef Miero, Linnemore Nefdt, Alessandra Saviotti, Akvile Slegeryte, Nicoletta Traversa.

Textile artwork Realised in collaboration with master weaver Stef Miero at the TextielLab, TextielMuseum, Tilburg. Artistic support: Amy Diaz-Newman. 

Digital platform Developed with ArcGIS in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Geomatica CIRCE at Università Iuav di Venezia, with Caterina Balletti and developer Massimo Mazzanti.

Caterina Pecchioli is a multimedia and multidisciplinary visual artist and independent researcher. Her work investigates the impact of power on collective behavior and socio-political dynamics, with a focus on decolonial practices. Through interdisciplinary research integrating photography, video, installation, performance, and relational practices, she develops action-research methodologies and counter-narrative practices aimed at questioning dominant narratives and systems of representation. A central focus of her research concerns decolonial perspectives and the legacies and effects of colonialism in visual and material culture. Furthermore, her field of inquiry has expanded towards the relationships between decolonial perspectives, ecology, memory, archival practices, and material culture. Alongside her individual practice, she participates in artistic collectives that use art as a catalyst for social change through collaborative processes and action-research methodologies.

Her projects have been presented at institutions such as Framer Framed (Amsterdam), CHEAP Festival (Bologna), Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella), Spazju Kreattiv (Valletta, Malta), Fondazione Studio Marangoni (Florence), International Center of Photography (Palermo), Museum of Natural History (Florence), Manifesta 12 (Palermo), MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art (Rome), Villa Romana (Florence), 56th Venice Biennale – The Nationless Pavilion (Venice), 6th Cairo Video Festival (Cairo), Mulle International Arts Festival (Seoul), MAD – Murate Art District (Florence), NESXT (Turin), and OFF Biennale (Cairo). She is a 2025 Thami Mnyele Foundation Awardee and winner of the Strategia Fotografia (2025) and Italian Council XI (2022) by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

www.caterinapecchioli.com  – www.nation25.com  - www.bwblackwhite.org

Instagram: @catepecchioli