Glenn Kaino debuted this work in the exhibition Sign at Kavi Gupta in Chicago. The series explores border, mapping, and the epistemic control of colonialism. Beginning with a series of maps that express the territorial boundaries won in the combative struggle for colonial expansion, Kaino first calls attention to the violence hidden in the cartographic translation by distressing the graphical elements with a forceful transfer technique. Kaino’s thick and abstracted marks distort and obliterate the fine penmanship used to delicately present the results of violent collisions that took place in the actual physical space that the maps represent. These ideas are further complicated by the shaping of new diagrams into circular forms presented on the backdrop of ink stained wood. The maps appear at viewing distance to be illustrations of planets, an indictment of our future interstellar colonial ambition, played out in our past. The frames of these works are made in unsealed copper, which further records the hands of the artist, handlers, patrons and any audience member who touches the work. The borders are themselves each a boundary for an idea that becomes an endless record of complicity and implication.