Curator Lesley Lokko on the Venice Architecture Biennale: ‘It’s about a world that’s yet to come’

When Lesley Lokko is asked to curate the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, it feels like the next chapter in a story she’s been building for decades. “I told myself, ‘You’ve waited so long for a seat: now take it, say something,'” she said during a stopover in London en route from Ghana to Venice.

The wait is over: the 18th Annual Architectural Excellence Cultural Extravaganza kicks off on May 20th. Under Lokko’s direction, 89 independent exhibitors from 64 countries will present proposals and provocations that reflect the current state of the discipline. And, for the first time, the spotlight will be on Africa and its diaspora. “The space has been opened up to tell a different and more complex story about architecture and its relationship to society,” said Lokko.

Her wish is not to replace the existing architectural canon, but to extend it. “The feeling of an incomplete story that didn’t make room for other voices was strong in my head.”

The Ghanaian-Scottish academic leads the African Futures Institute, an Accra-based architecture school and events platform she founded in 2020. Lokko took a detour: she tried to study Hebrew, Arabic and sociology before studying architecture at University College London. In London, she initially gravitated towards designing homes, but found the realities of architectural practice too confusing. “I was drawn to the idea of ​​a neat desk and a jar of pencils,” she jokes. “But I was terrible. I built my own house and built one for friends: it was a nightmare experience.” She quickly realized that education was her calling, earning a Ph.D. University teaching.

For 12 years, she left architecture entirely to become a writer: her first novel, sunset (2004), a bestseller, and she published 11 more. In 2012, The Scotsman described her book as “Jackie Collins . . . with an edge of intelligence and sophistication”. Writing novels, she discovered, is not entirely divorced from architecture: “They’re all about imaginary worlds, and you have to have a three-dimensional mind to put them together.”

Consistent is Lokko’s interest in the intersection of race and space from her novel and 2000 anthology, White Paper, Black Mark: Race, Culture, Architecture, to the Graduate School of Architecture she founded in Johannesburg in 2015 in the context of the Must Fall movement in Rhode Island. The Venice exhibition is the concrete embodiment of these ideas.

This is the first time an architecture biennale has hired a curator of African descent. In Venice’s complex of 29 permanent national pavilions, there is a conspicuous lack of voices from the continent; Egypt is the only one represented. This matters not only because it ignores a large part of the world, but also because the region is at the forefront of pressing global challenges—including climate change and rapid urbanization.

The Global South is often seen as a problem that needs to be addressed from the outside. Lokko counters that Africa is rich in ideas that Western institutions have so far ignored. The young continent is “the laboratory of the future,” she says. That’s the title she chose for this year’s exhibition, which aims to encourage a bold vision of how we should live.

Attendees will respond to the themes of decolonization and decarbonization – themes that, Lokko noted, transcend the zeitgeist. Historically, for Europe, the black body was a “unit of energy,” she said. “So the relationship between decolonization and decarbonization has been around for a thousand years.”

Leading African and diaspora practitioners – such as Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama and South African architect Sumayya Vally – are exhibited alongside others from around the world. Special projects explore themes from food to gender, and the styles of tropical modernism that developed in West Africa during colonial rule. Country pavilions interpret the theme through their own lens – from water-focused countries (Greece, Panama, Grenada) to the UK, exploring how diaspora communities use everyday rituals to occupy space. “A lot of what you’re going to see is about imaginative construction and storytelling through film, photography, painting, models—it’s about a world that hasn’t yet come,” Lokko said.

The focus on Africa and its diaspora is also a way of exploring hybridity, identity and cultural fusion—arguably the defining conditions of our time. Architecture itself is a hybrid profession, intersecting with planning, politics and public health. “There’s something about the training of architects that is particularly relevant to our time: it’s about bringing together disparate pieces of information into a framework,” Lokko said. “Architecture is not just building buildings.”

Such a broad definition would leave her vulnerable to a common criticism of architects: that they consider themselves experts in everything. Lokko stresses that she is not proposing an endless expansion of the discipline — rather, challenges beyond what is traditionally understood in architecture are inevitable. “The hope is that by prioritizing other issues, the very nature of how people practice architecture will change,” she said. “Architects have the power to change the culture of how we build and how we view resources.”

Ultimately, though, Lokko’s intent isn’t just to tell a different story, it’s to change who tells it. More than half of this year’s exhibitors are from the African continent or diaspora. Gender parity, with an average age of 43, stands in stark contrast to an industry dominated by older, white male voices. In keeping with Lokko’s interest in education, the Biennale is hosting, for the first time, an “Academy” for 50 early career practitioners from around the world.

Not all of Lokko’s own teaching work has been positive. Her resignation as dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York in 2020 drew widespread public attention. In her resignation letter, Lokko described it as a “profound act of self-preservation.” Beyond experiencing overwork and a lack of meaningful support during the first phase of the pandemic — “no job is worth a human life,” she said — she said the agency was structurally resistant to the transformation it claimed it wanted.

For Lokko, one of the resulting realizations is the importance of creating alternatives to traditional power networks. “Before then, I thought relationships with allies were found almost by accident. Now I have a more definitive view: It’s important, for example, that women of my generation — I’m approaching 60 — can contribute to Used by young women. Succession is what you create by creating opportunities.”

When the show closes in November, that network may be its most immediate legacy. However, its impact will be limited by its context. “In a continent of one billion people, how many Africans will come to Venice?” (At the time of writing, members of Lokko’s team in Accra were denied visas to attend the event.)

So what do those who can do it take away? “I want people to see the power of imagination—that it’s not dependent on privilege or resources,” Lokko said, “and that they’re transformed by the experience.”

until November 26, labiennale.org