How can we understand borders differently?
Architect and researcher Nishat Awan explores how stories, maps, and technologies shape our view of migration and displacement.
In this FRONT ROW lecture, she talks about Topological Atlas, a poetic research project that makes migration visible through digital, sensory, and human perspectives.
Nishat Awan is an architect whose work focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and space, including questions related to diasporas, migration and borders. Her research and practice bring together digital, ethnographic and field-based approaches in often contested geographies. Her writing develops work on digital witnessing as spatial practice in the context of humanitarian responses to violence and conflict.
Topological Atlas is a long-term artistic project on migration that is concerned with an ecology of practices that emerges across borders – from the coastal knowledge of the Indian Ocean where centuries old myths intersect with infrastructural development to the fragmented journeys of migration where the dreams, delusions and deceptions of borders are endured as a rite of passage, and through an appeal to saints and symbols. At a time when migration politics has become increasingly toxic and evidentiary approaches have failed to move the discourse, the project mobilizes other types of knowledge for an affective response to border politics. Departing from the Greek mythology of Atlas, the talk will address the failings of contemporary mapping platforms and geospatial technologies and the need to resist their totalizing effects. How can we think the digital not only as a tool or method, but as a realm of possibility that may allow certain lives and worlds to become (il)legible, mourn-able and addressable on their own terms?
Topological Atlas resulted in a digital platform produced in collaboration with Atelier Cartographique. The talk will be moderated by Pierre Marchand (Atelier Cartographique).
About Nishat Awan
Nishat Awan is Professor of Architecture and Visual Culture at UCL Urban Lab. Her book, Diasporic Agencies (Routledge, 2016) addressed the subject of how architecture and urbanism can respond to the consequences of increasing migration. She has also addressed alternative modes of architectural production in the co-authored book Spatial Agency (Routledge, 2011) and the co-edited book Trans-Local-Act (aaa-peprav, 2011). Her work has been exhibited at Nieuwe Instituut, Istanbul Biennale, Busan Museum of Modern Art and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, amongst others.
Practical information
Date: Thursday 27 november 2025, during M HKA LATE
Time: 19:00 — 20:30
Location: in the Muhka-auditorium (3rd floor)
Entrance: free, reserve your spot here
muhka.be/en/activities/front-row-with-nishat-awan
Artists: Nishat Awan
