Cartographical Lure is premised on the idea that maps as subjective visual representations of our lived environment chart our encounters with a geographical environment on a personal and experiential level. Looking back at a century of avant-garde practice, we may trace this strategy back to the Situationists concept of the derivé, further back to Walter Benjamin's meanderings through the Arcade and even further back to the very idea of the wandering flaneur that closes the nineteenth century and opens up an artistic position that maintains a precariously balance between critical distance and personal engagement.

The figure of the altermodern artist, recently invoked and described by Nicholas Bourriaud as an itinerant traveler, who straddles in-between cultures as mediators and translators, highlights an increasingly global art movement that sees the emergence of strategic practices that sought for individual spaces, personal orbits in a world that is becoming increasingly flat. A map and geography show such as this highlights the cartographical form as a responsive strategies along these lines in a mobile world where artists play an increasingly sophisticated role as a traveler and explorer, mapping a subjective trajectory that follows individual impulses and interests, revealing to us personal vision if not an understanding of the world we live in.

Like the character Din in Tash Aw's Map of the Invisible World, a struggling scholar who desires to write a 'secret history' of the Indonesian islands (a project that hopes to communicate an authentic experience, 'those islands were like a lost world where everything remained true and authentic, away from the gaze of foreigners - a kind of invisible world'), the cartographical lure draws a number of artists to produce what is perceived to be a more subjective and also ironically more concrete idea of a geographical landscape.

Not surprising a number of these artistic undertakings aim at subverting nationalistic narratives. Using landscape as medium, Krisna Murti sketches out a portrait of 'a cultural position, identity or an attempt of the Indonesian people to understand this reality'. Unlimited Zone hints at the space stretching towards all possibility, exceeding the landscape tradition of the Dutch Indies that was a crucial legacy that has shaped the cultural geography of Indonesia.

Chong Kim Chiew's Map of Correction depicts a process of redressing national boundaries as the physical form of Malaysia is almost erased, leaving an amorphous collection of townships to suggest a fragmented state of existence. Similarly, using stickers to draw out a geographical History of Singapore, Jason Wee performs a subtle critique on the packaging of history in the tourism and pop cultural industry, a system that flattens out inconsistencies and ruptures into a teleological narrative.

Tiffany Chung's 10.75ºN 106.6667ºE - 2020 refers to the coordinate of a specific site in Ho Chi Minh City, questioning the utopian visions of development as well as the discrepant modernities that attend the exercise of controlled order and progress. The result of this exponential growth in urban centres around Southeast Asia is not a painless one. Mark Salvatus' Comfort Zone is an exercise in detourement. Using a found zoning map of Seoul, which was used as a guide for developers to build new structures at the expense of tearing down small villages, Mark creates a make-shift shelter for the city, symbolising the displacement of its inhabitants.

This hidden reign is further exposed in Jenifer Wofford's wall piece. The 5 Point Star explores the binding, colonial and commercial ties between the United States, the Philippines, Mexico, China and Spain. Installed in the pentagram format, the occult allusion suggest the slightly occult relationship between these nations just as much as 5 point stars are often symbols of patriotism, militarism, faith and power.

On a more individual level, Bea Camacho's Analysis of Relative Distance abstracts kinship relation, using minimalist vocabulary to portray the emotional scale across a familial bind that spans the globe. Nadiah Bamadhaj's critique on Malaysian suburban built environment is powerfully argued in Follow the Road, suggesting how the ordering of space in our lived environment shapes our identity. On the other hand, Gan Siong King’s The Loneliest Place in the World redeems this dystopic assessment. The work plunges us into the bedroom of the artist, carving out a personal creative space for reflection and thought. It is an assertion of agency and artistic will, arguing that the fulfillment we all find in art provides us with answers against the imposition of an exterior knowledge on the individual.