Raj Jariwala

My practice moves along two interlinked inquiries: the politics and poetics of map making viewed from a distant, and the visualization of numbers as a language that shapes spaces, forms and perceptions. I treat maps and numerical values not as neutral instruments but as expressive systems that carry claims to truths, codes of power and emotional weight.

I approach cartographic and satellite images as a material. Images that assert geographic accuracy while simultaneously staging perspectives.In my mapping work I explore the distance that exists between information received as an outsider and the lived reality encountered by an insider. This distance is built into cartography, into computer rendered satellite imagery, and into the politics that determine what is recorded, measured or erased. By juxtaposing cartographic maps with satellite data I seek to reveal how borders are produced and redefined: borders remain abstract until they are measured, recorded and circulated, and the technological evolution of imaging reconfigures both how territories are seen and how their histories are told.

Parallel to my cartographic investigations is a focused inquiry into how numbers, geometry and measurement function as languages with emotional and political weight. In the drawing series Structural Occupations I treat numbers not only as abstract values but as agents that create rhythm, define weight and produce spatial occupation. I treat numerical systems like binary codes, algorithmic sequences, and classical series (such as the Fibonacci and Pascal triangles) not as neutral data but as grammars that carry rules, choices and consequences. These systems build spaces that we often do not see: some are open, others restricted; like wartime codes, only a few can read them.

I seek to visualise these hidden, tangible languages through repetition, marks and grids: each cell may hold a counted number of lines, an accumulation of pigment, or an eroded void. These processes map structured, unstructured and semi-structured data into visual terrains where mathematical logic and human contingency collide. I am also attentive to how non-visual systems such as sound rhythms, temporal pulses, and ambient noise can occupy space structurally, and often treat these qualities as paradigms for visual occupation. For me, abstraction is a method of making things visible: translating sequences into spatial topographies that move between architectural logic and fractal growth.

Through this work I aim to reclaim numerical and cartographic languages for human contemplation: to surface their politics, to feel their weight, and to reframe measurement as both a tool of organization and a medium of experience. Selected series include Different Question, Different Map and Structural Occupations, where maps, numbers and mark-making meet to question how we see, measure and inhabit the world.