Imagining the Fictional Mountains of Kong

Jim Naughten’s series “Mountains of Kong,” on view at Michael Hoppen Gallery in London until October 21, imagines the flora, fauna and terrain of an African mountain range that never existed. The Mountains of Kong, running East and West across central West Africa, first appeared on a 1798 map created by an English cartographer. In the 1880s, French explorers found that the mountains did not exist, but the range has been included in subsequent maps well into the twentieth century.