Current Exhibition:
Maps, Memories, Reflections
a captivating exhibition by textile artist Bettina Matzkuhn that explores the intricate relationship between memory, emotion, and place.
Drawing on cartography as both method and metaphor, Matzkuhn’s embroidered works challenge the idea that maps are objective records of space. Instead, they reveal how memory is shaped by feeling—distorted, selective, and deeply personal. Each piece becomes a reflection of lived experience, where landscapes are reimagined through moments, impressions, and emotional connections.
About this exhibit
Memories, Maps, Reflections: The Cartography of Bettina Matzkuhn
Exhibit at the Italian Cultural Centre Gallery, April 16- May 24, 2026
One doesn’t remember one’s own life chronologically, the way it happened, what was most important, or even what seemed most important. We are not in control of our memories. One doesn’t own one’s memories. One is owned by them.”
Textile artist Bettina Matzkuhn explores the terrain of human memory. Utilizing cartography as a metaphor she believes place and memory are intertwined. Matzkuhn demonstrates that human memory, at its core, is selective. It is our human capacity for emotion which is the deciding factor in how we perceive place, location, and even the size and scale, of the of a space and its contents.
Each map in Matzkuhn’s exhibition is embroidered, physically and metaphorically, with the artist’s recollections and emotional attachments. For the artist, emotion overrides memory, and her maps are testimonials to this. Her maps two-dimensionally depict her three- dimensional experiences associated with place such as: an imaginary tour of Canada rendered onto a guitar strap in fully -embroidered landscape; or the intimacy of a meditative walk along commercial drive where the varietal of trees at each juncture is the only lasting memory. Her understanding of community, as seen from her tree map, is not defined by human inhabitants, but rather by clusters of the living and breathing trees populating it.
Bettina’s cartography dispenses with the fallacy that terrain can be mapped with scientific precision. Rather, Matzkuhn, sees mapmaking not as a science, but an art consisting of unquantifiable and very personal impressions. Matzkuhn proves that maps do not exist solely to locate space, but rather since their contents are funneled through the imperfections of human perception their accuracy is obscured by contaminants such as: propaganda, bias, emotional attachment, cognitive dissonance, and even personal will; how we wish the world was, instead of is. In essence, maps represent what our society, and the scientific mind, chooses to believe is true, regardless of whether or not it replicates reality.