What if Africa is the continent of the future? The one where "All issues of equity, resources, race, hope and fear converge and merge. Africa. On an anthropological level, we are all Africans. And what happens in Africa happens to all of us.»These are the words of Lesley Lokko, curator of the next International Architecture Exhibition to be held in Venice from 20 May to 26 November 2023 and which will have the African continent as its protagonist. With all its contradictions but also with all its resources. The Laboratory of the Future is the title of this 18th edition that the curator herself explains is absolutely fitting with the Venice Biennale which has always been "A sort of laboratory of the future, a time and a space in which questions are raised about the relevance of the discipline for this world - and for the one to come".
The Laboratory of the Future, the Biennale as an artisan workshop
In this logic theAfrica is the capital of the future, a magnifying glass from which to look at the rest of the world. For its being the youngest continent and the one with the fastest rate of urbanization. With all its problems: environmental, health, racial. And yet, precisely these problems have become an instrument of extraordinary resilience and self-sufficiency, also of hope and trust in the future. "Hope is a powerful currency - explains Lesley Lokko - ... And architects, historically, are key players in translating images into reality". This is why the next Architecture Biennale will be like an artisan workshop. "A laboratory - it is always the curator who speaks - in which architects and professionals from a wide field of creative disciplines trace a path made up of examples taken from their contemporary activities that the public, made up of participants and visitors, will be able to travel by imagining for themselves what the future may hold".
These are the guidelines of the next Architecture Biennale which he wants to represent under the curatorship of Lesley Lokko un "Pact - explains the president of the Biennale Robert Cicutto - among visitors, the world of architecture and culture in general ". An exhibition that starts from very concrete premises and very precise points of view to look at “The representatives of the participating countries and all those who will populate the Giardini, the Arsenale and the City of Venice are straight in the eye. All to speak to the world, which is the real reason why a Curator takes on the responsibility of making an International Exhibition of the Biennale ".
Lesley Lokko curator attentive to the relationship between 'race', culture and space
In these difficult times there is a need for concreteness. And it is precisely this element one of the starting points of the 18th edition of the Venice International Architecture Exhibition which, as usual, will open the Pavilions of the Giardini and the Arsenale in addition to the many collateral events offered by international bodies and institutions that can be visited by wandering through the historic center of Venice, each year more and more involved in this event.
The curator Lesley Lokko, Ganese and Scottish, is an architect, architecture teacher and writer. She was born in Dundee in Scotland, raised in Africa, taught in the UK, USA, Europe, Australia and Africa. She today she lives between London and Accra in Ghana. You have been working for at least thirty years on the relationship between 'race', culture and space. With the idea, and it is the one underlying the next Architecture Biennale, that "More than buildings, shapes, materials or structures, the most precious and powerful gift of architecture is the ability to influence the way we see the world.".
(featured photo: Accra, Festus Jackson)
