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This collective is drawing an intersectional feminist map of L.A.

Angelena Atlas

This collective is drawing an intersectional feminist map of L.A.

A view of the first edition of the Angelena Atlas in front of its namesake city. (Courtesy Mapping Feminist Los Angeles)

Maps often reveal as much about the beliefs and culture of the mapmaker as they do about the locations they depict. Taking this in stride, the collective Mapping Feminist Los Angeles has begun to put together the Angelena Atlas in order to “to share intersectional feminist resources, services, and events for womxn in Los Angeles County.”

The organization, which is based out of the Women’s Center for Creative Work, comprises three core members—Leana Scott, Yasmine Batniji, and Brittany Arceneaux—who bring together skills in everything from urban planning and tech development to community organizing and digital art.

photo of Mapping Feminist Los Angeles members Yasmine Batniji, Leana Scott, and Brittany Arceneaux
Mapping Feminist Los Angeles members (from left to right) Yasmine Batniji, Leana Scott, and Brittany Arceneaux showing off the Angelena Atlas at the Los Feliz event space Days. (Courtesy Mapping Feminist Los Angeles)

Mapping Feminist Los Angeles member Leana Scott points out that “cities often have networks of resources…but bringing those to light is quite difficult. And information remains underground or piecemeal and disjointed.” Brittany Arceneaux goes on to say that far too often access to this information is “very much based upon your existing social networks,” which further limits knowledge of these resources to those already in the know. The Angelena Atlas confronts this problem head-on by collecting, collating, and annotating a wide range of resources from reproductive health centers to performance spaces while attempting to promote itself outside of just the networks its members already exist in. The goal is to make a map as widely accessible as possible, certainly no small feat.

The Angelena Atlas will feature resources across the entirety of Los Angeles County, so people can find organizations that serve them, collectives to participate in, or spaces to share their work no matter their locale. It will also, as its explicitly intersectional mission suggests, be centered around resources that are, among many other things, anti-racist, anti-ableist, pro-immigrant, and LGBTQ friendly. Additionally, the various points on the Angelena Atlas will be annotated to help people understand the purpose, audience, and accessibility of the various spaces

A graphic from the work in progress Angelena Atlas
A graphic from the work in progress Angelena Atlas (Courtesy Mapping Feminist Los Angeles)

While the collective has presented zines and other preliminary materials at zine and artbook fairs and other events (they have an upcoming fundraiser and awareness-building brunch that will also bring together some organizations on the map), the final form of the Angelena Atlas is still under construction. Part of what they’ll be focusing on is what Batniji calls a “creative representation of data” that will help people highlight “the impact that the resources have on them.” In this way, the Angelena Atlas will be a participatory project, radically horizontal and ever evolving. They also are looking into open source solutions for the online map so that they, and the public, retain ownership of their information. In addition, they plan on making a print version to make sure they truly can create a resource for as many people as possible. Arceneaux says that this approach to mapmaking “goes back to the core values of the project by making sure that everything we’re doing and every design decision that we make is really tied back to intersectionality and making sure that these places are friendly and accessible to people of all abilities and experiences.”

Arceneaux goes on to point out that many people, especially in the current political environment, are interested in joining conversations and finding community, but may not even realize that there might be “an organization in [their] own backyard.” As Scott puts it, the Angelena Atlas not only has the direct effect of providing useful information but also “fosters a new spatial awareness through data.” It’s all about “recontextualizing Los Angeles.” Arceneaux’s hope is that “by highlighting and visualizing the activity that is happening in our city people will start to look at their communities a little differently.”

Thinking about feminist mapping and radical mapping inevitably begs the question of what an intersectional feminist city would look like. However, Batniji says the group is “not interested in creating utopias because that’s where things get really sticky.” In the public sphere “there’s always going to be contention, there’s always going to be issues. A feminist city would be a place for having these conversations. A feminist city would be just a place for possibility to happen.” It would be, as Arceneaux puts it, “a place where everyone feels empowered.”

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