Atlas of Uncertainty maps African cities beyond the limits of data, disorder, and prediction.
2 June 2026
As narratives of crisis continue to dominate representations of African urbanism, ‘Atlas of Uncertainty: Transforming African Cityscapes’ proposes a different point of departure. Bringing together artists, scholars, writers, and urban thinkers, the exhibition considers African cities not as sites of lack or exception, but as spaces where the contours of the future are already being negotiated and lived.
Presented at Johannesburg’s Origins Centre, the exhibition unfolds through film, installation, sculpture, photography, tapestry, sound, and speculative practices that attend to the textures of everyday urban life. Across the works, questions of mobility, memory, infrastructure, migration, repair, and belonging emerge as intertwined forces shaping contemporary cityscapes. Rather than illustrating urban realities, the participating artists trace their rhythms, absences, and invisible architectures.
Part of a broader interdisciplinary project that spans a forthcoming publication and digital platform, ‘Atlas of Uncertainty’ brings artistic inquiry into dialogue with essays, conversations, maps, and visualisations. In doing so, it challenges the authority of singular narratives and fixed forms of knowledge, creating space for alternative ways of sensing and understanding the city.
What emerges is not a definitive map, but a proposition: that African cities occupy a central position in imagining and navigating an increasingly uncertain urban world.
This exhibition is on view at the Origins Centre at Wits University in Johannesburg, until 3 July 2026.
