Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 7 hours ago
J Maizlish Mole is an artist, mapmaker and songwriter whose intricate, hand-drawn maps explore memory, myth and the politics of space. For Folkestone Triennial 2025: How Lies the Land?, he presents Folkestone In Ruins—a sprawling mental map built from 1,200 historical descriptions and a month-long walk across the town. Blending fact, fiction and forgotten details, Mole’s practice resists conventional geography in favour of poetic, subjective cartography. This work layers centuries of vanished places into a surreal archaeology, where errors are embraced and time folds in on itself—a town remembered, misremembered, and mapped with obsessive care.
ABOUT CREATIVE FOLKESTONE
Creative Folkestone is a visionary arts charity and placemaking organisation dedicated to making Folkestone a great place to live, work, play, study and visit. Creative Folkestone believes in the power of art and creativity to encourage positive social change and should be open and accessible to all. Since 2002, Creative Folkestone have been transforming Folkestone through several key projects including Folkestone Artworks, Folkestone Book Festival, Creative Quarter, Folkestone Triennial and Quarterhouse. Through all these projects we enable people to get creative. In 2021, Creative Folkestone also became custodians of Prospect Cottage, the former home of Derek Jarman, following a successful campaign to save the property for the nation in partnership with Art Fund and Tate.
Film by Oliver Parkin
oliverparkin.com
instagram.com/oliver_filmmaker
J Maizlish Mole is an artist, mapmaker and songwriter whose intricate, hand-drawn maps explore memory, myth and the politics of space. For Folkestone Triennial 2025: How Lies the Land?, he presents Folkestone In Ruins—a sprawling mental map built from 1,200 historical descriptions and a month-long walk across the town. Blending fact, fiction and forgotten details, Mole’s practice resists conventional geography in favour of poetic, subjective cartography. This work layers centuries of vanished places into a surreal archaeology, where errors are embraced and time folds in on itself—a town remembered, misremembered, and mapped with obsessive care.
ABOUT CREATIVE FOLKESTONE
Creative Folkestone is a visionary arts charity and placemaking organisation dedicated to making Folkestone a great place to live, work, play, study and visit. Creative Folkestone believes in the power of art and creativity to encourage positive social change and should be open and accessible to all. Since 2002, Creative Folkestone have been transforming Folkestone through several key projects including Folkestone Artworks, Folkestone Book Festival, Creative Quarter, Folkestone Triennial and Quarterhouse. Through all these projects we enable people to get creative. In 2021, Creative Folkestone also became custodians of Prospect Cottage, the former home of Derek Jarman, following a successful campaign to save the property for the nation in partnership with Art Fund and Tate.
Film by Oliver Parkin
oliverparkin.com
instagram.com/oliver_filmmaker
