January 2020
“Equatorial Guinea (Un)Known” is the main result (although not the only one) of the research project funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, ‘What we know, ignore, invent, and distort about the past and present of Equatorial Guinea. Multidisciplinary critical review and new research avenues’ (HAR2012-34599).
Image extracted from page 367 of Travels in Madeira, Sierra Leone, Teneriffe, St. Jago, Cape Coast, … Princes Island, etc. Second edition, by HOLMAN, James. Original held and digitised by the British Library
My contribution to this project is the article “Santa Isabel: Words, Images, and Experiences.” The text examines a fragment of the formation of the city of Malabo to offer a topological approach to reading the space. This text is part of a series of writings that aim to describe how the city of Malabo was shaped from its beginnings to the present day, based on cartographic sources, urban plans, architectural projects, administrative reports, diaries, and travelogues. It also makes special reference to human experiences, with the intention of providing an initial topological view of the city, highlighting other aspects of it. These experiences give uniqueness to spaces, which are infused with the daily lives that individuals or groups have accumulated and influence how the different places and sections of the space are named. Considering all these overlapping layers that define the city, the text reflects on the naming of these spaces, the neighborhoods that were once inhabited places, the images used to describe it (engravings, maps), their narratives, experiences, and how they were mapped out.