Explore Dream Palaces Map

This web map invites you to explore "dream palaces" through a reimagined vision of the world, where oceans are connected and lands are rearranged. As map projections flatten the globe into a two-dimensional form, distortion inevitably occurs; the key question becomes what is chosen to be emphasized and what is rendered invisible.
When we claim to know what a country looks like, we are also acknoledging how our perception of the world has been shaped by a violent history of war, colonial drawing, territorial division, and extraction. To speak of national borders is therefore also to invoke the "color line", the relationship between darder and lighter races across continents, the islands of the seas, and the geopolitical and social boundaries imposed through colonialism and imperialism.
Guided by an anti-colonial cartographic approach, this project adopts the Spilhasu projection and reconfigures our geospatial data within this alternative spatial framework. When oceans are connected, continents appear in unfamiliar arrangements, we deliberately destablize traditional hierarchies of spatial attention and challenge dominant assumptions about what constitutes the "center" of the world.
This map currently shows data from the following countries: Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Clicking on these countries allows you to explore more specific data using a familiar Web Mercator view. The mapping team welcomes ideas, thoughts, and feedback on how to further develop decolonial cartographic methods through this project.