Dylan Altamiranda

Research question: What was the role of a certain tradition of printing in the Netherlands in the formation of imaginaries stemming from travel narratives at the dawn of the colonial project in the Americas?
 

For his residency at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Amsterdam, Dylan Altamiranda proposes to undertake a research project focused on images derived from accounts of voyages to the Americas produced in the Netherlands during the age of “discovery”. Taking into account the Netherlands’ tradition of engraving and printing, he aims to explore the role this visual culture played in shaping the imaginaries that emerged from travel narratives at the dawn of the colonial enterprise in the Americas.

Through the seemingly simple act of bringing these archives out of drawers via a contemporary artistic practice, Dylan envisions a research residency that interrogates these historical images through the medium of drawing. Employing a travel diary—much like the ancient navigators—he seeks to decipher the processes of image-making through images themselves, in order to better understand their processes, media, representations, and modes of circulation.

Particular attention will be given to maps, which occupy a unique position at the intersection of text, image, and geography. They function as palimpsests of the imagined real, woven together with a specific conception of the world.