Mmakhotso Lamola

She graduated from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the University of Cape Town, where she completed her architectural masters degree.

Her work avails itself of the immersive interstitial spaces of disciplines, unfolding through a vulnerable process-based research praxis. Here, she investigates the emotional landscapes that constitute urban space and beyond, where she attempts to forge new modes of archiving to create more personal, softer narratives about cities, identities and belonging. Lamola explores this phenomenon by examining the histories of both well-documented and lesser-known narratives to unearth a complex and rich understanding of what it means to be a part of cities, landscapes, identities and communities.

She produces modes of research that replace the impulse to discover with the impetus to recover, heal, listen, and give voice to the silenced; in this way she aims to complicate what seems simple and advocate for vulnerability above all else. Her projects are explorations of how one can find new languages to describe the city so that everyone can enter into its spatial dialogue equally, particularly in post-colonial contexts.

Lamola has been an artist in residence at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Grigri Pixel Residency by MediaLab Prado, Residency 11:11, and the Institute of Creative Arts Fellowship. Her poetry has been published in the New Landscapes Anthology, as well as Visions of Home, both published by Lungs Project. Her writing has been featured in the Summer Flowers Pumflet, published by Wolff Architects. She is the founder and curator of the The Belonging Collective Archive. Along with Zahra Malkani and Luiza Proença, she is a member of the collaboration Tricontinental Secret Garden, which was founded during her residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2022.