Mpho Matsipa speaks on fugitivity and African spatial imaginaries as part of the workshop and seminar series Toolkit for Today: Archival Absencing. Matsipa’s seminar explores how contemporary African urban narratives about the past, present, and near-future might be informed by contemporary urban transformations in African cities. Matsipa discusses various commissions included in the exhibition African Mobilities—including a short, speculative animated film set in Lagos, created by Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous and Lagosian Wale Lawal as part of their Mad Horse City submission.

Mpho Matsipa is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning, New York, and lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Planning, Johannesburg. She is a researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and co-investigator on an Andrew Mellon research grant on Urban Mobilities. She has curated several exhibitions including the South Africa Pavilion in the 11th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2008), African Mobilities at the Architekturmuseum, Munich (2018), and Studio-X Johannesburg (2014–2016).