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A map is usually something we use to find our way. It tells us where a place is, how far it is, and how one place connects to another. But for architect and digital artist Nahom, a map can do something much more: it can tell us why a place matters.
Working with geographic data, Nahom transforms the familiar language of maps into contemporary artworks that explore the identity of Ethiopian and African cities. The maps focus primarily on Ethiopian and African cities, presenting familiar places through a different visual lens. Roads, waterways, terrain, neighborhoods, and urban patterns form the foundation, but the finished pieces are intended to communicate more than geographic information. They are attempts to explore what makes a place recognizable, distinctive, and meaningful to the people who inhabit it.
The idea grew from a simple observation: while some cities around the world have developed strong visual identities that are instantly recognizable, many African cities remain comparatively underrepresented in contemporary visual culture.
This is not because they lack character. African cities contain remarkable combinations of geography, history, architecture, culture, and everyday life. The challenge is finding visual languages that can communicate that richness.
Why African Cities?
The focus on African cities comes from a broader concern about representation. Digital maps and visual media have become an important part of how people understand the world. People can recognize certain cities through their skylines, architecture, public spaces, photographs, and other familiar visual references.
Yet African cities are often represented through a narrower set of images and narratives. The continent is frequently discussed as a whole, even though its cities differ enormously in geography, history, culture, architecture, and patterns of development. Creating detailed visual representations of individual cities provides another way to communicate that diversity.
The intention is not to create a single definition of an “African city.” Quite the opposite: the work emphasizes that African cities have individual identities and deserve to be understood on their own terms. A city should not be reduced to a geographic coordinate. It is a place shaped by people, memories, landscapes, and generations of change.
Starting With the Character of a City
When beginning a new city map, the first question is not simply what can be mapped, but what makes that particular city distinctive.
Geography, history, landscape, architecture, culture, and the relationship between the city and its surroundings all become part of the research. A mountainous city may call attention to its terrain, while another may be defined by a river, a particular urban pattern, historical development, or the relationship between its built environment and surrounding landscape. This means that each map can develop its own visual character rather than following a single formula.
The approach is also influenced by an architectural way of reading cities. Architecture trains the eye to understand spaces not as isolated objects, but as parts of larger systems. Buildings relate to streets, streets relate to neighborhoods, neighborhoods relate to landscapes, and all of these relationships influence how people experience a place.
There is another layer to that understanding: the people who occupy those spaces. Every household has its own routines, traditions, needs, and ways of living. When thousands of these individual lives are brought together within a city, they create an extraordinary level of complexity. The physical city becomes an accumulation of human experiences.
That relationship between the physical and the human is an important part of the broader question behind the maps: what actually gives a city its identity?
More Than a Location
A location can tell us where something is. A city tells us much more.
It carries memories, habits, histories, relationships, and cultural associations. It changes as people build, move, adapt, and interact with one another. Two cities can have similar geographic conditions and still develop completely different identities.
This perspective opens up an interesting space for looking at African cities. Across the continent, geography, architecture, culture, and everyday life come together in remarkably different ways, giving each city its own character. As contemporary visual culture continues to evolve, there is an opportunity to explore these identities through new forms of representation – not only documenting what these places look like, but interpreting the qualities that make them distinct. In that sense, mapping becomes another way of celebrating the diversity and individuality already present across African cities.
Creating contemporary representations of these places is therefore not only about documenting them. It is also about expanding the visual language through which they are understood. The work starts from Ethiopia, with city maps that explore different places and their individual characteristics, but the larger question extends beyond any single city or country: how can African places be represented in ways that reflect their complexity rather than reducing them to broad or familiar stereotypes?
Seeing Familiar Places Again
There is another reason these representations can be meaningful, particularly for people who live in the cities being depicted. Familiarity can make a place invisible. When people move through the same streets every day, they can become accustomed to their surroundings. Buildings, landscapes, roads, and other features become part of a routine rather than something actively observed. A map can provide a different perspective.
By stepping away from street level and looking at the city as a whole, relationships and patterns become visible. The shape of neighborhoods, the movement of roads, the influence of terrain, and the relationship between the built environment and nature can suddenly appear differently. The city becomes something to rediscover. This is one of the ways visual representation can contribute to local pride. Seeing a familiar place treated as a subject worthy of artistic attention can encourage people to reconsider qualities they may have overlooked.
The Challenge of Representing People
For all the information a map can contain, one of the most important parts of a city remains difficult to represent: its people. Human experience cannot easily be reduced to geographic data. Cities are created through countless interactions, traditions, memories, routines, and individual stories.
This is one reason the work is beginning to move beyond maps alone. Collaborations with photographers and the introduction of different themes allow additional aspects of urban life to enter the conversation. Rather than expecting one artwork to communicate the entirety of a city, different forms of visual storytelling can reveal different layers.
The physical landscape can show how a city is structured. Photography can capture moments and people. Other artistic approaches can explore culture, memory, architecture, or everyday life. Together, these perspectives can create a more complete picture.
A Different Way to Look at Place
The work ultimately sits at an intersection between data and human experience. The ambition is not to capture an entire city in a single image. A city is too complex for that. Instead, each artwork can offer a new perspective an opportunity to step back, notice patterns, rediscover familiar surroundings, and consider what gives a place its identity.
For African cities, this also opens a larger conversation about how the continent is seen and represented. There is no shortage of extraordinary places to document. What is needed is a continued expansion of the visual languages used to tell their stories. Sometimes, seeing a city differently begins with simply looking at it from another angle. And sometimes, a map can be the starting point.
