At the Venice Architecture Biennale, Africa in Glory

Since its first edition in 1980 under the title “Presence of the Past”, paving the way for postmodernism in Europe, the Venice Architecture Biennale has always presented itself as an invitation to introspection. In the history-laden places where it takes place, between the halls of the Arsenal and the Giardini pavilions, the celebration of the discipline and its brave representatives goes hand in hand with a form of self-criticism and a desire for renewal. The exercise is dangerous and the pitfalls are many: gigantic spaces, often inexperienced commissioners, overwhelmed by the scope of the mission when they do not see it as a purely diplomatic exercise, architects who pretend to be artists or academics… But Leslie Loco, curator of this eighteenth edition, which opened on Saturday, On May 20, he avoided them. He even opens it with a panache.

Ghanaian and Scottish by civil status, this activist of the heart, who wears the hats of an architect, teacher and writer, took advantage of the opportunity offered to him and organized this major exhibition, the most prestigious discipline on a global scale, to bring a sovereign Africa to the front, captured in glory. This continent, to which the history of the discipline is firmly tied in Greco-Roman antiquity, has never tried to connect, to which the environment has never given room to fold – the geopolitical order of the Venice Biennale gives it a good measure. This, which gives it two national pavilions (for Nigeria and South Africa) out of a host of sixty-four, and whose public, as the curator pointed out, is almost exclusively white as of press time – is therefore the star of the event.

This is not all that topic. Entitled “Laboratory of the Future”, the exhibition offers to explore from architecture the ways of a more breathable future that Leslie Loco wants. “Decarbonized and Decolonized”. As much as “The black body has long been the first source of energy”According to him, these two concepts are closely intertwined. It is for this reason that Africa is celebrated. Not just to right the wrongs that have been done to him throughout history and the ones that continue to afflict him in the present, but so that we know it. Because a carbon-free and decolonized future is impossible without it. As long as Africa does not occupy the place, which is rightly so considering the size of its territory and population, but also considering its history and culture, the traces of which have been largely erased by colonization, but artists, researchers, architects work. The program announced for the exhumation today will remain wishful thinking.