The New York Times gives Lesley Lokko the profile treatment ahead of next week’s Venice Biennale
Although the Biennale is hardly the first major exhibition to focus on Black and diasporic practitioners, the cascading crises of climate change, rapid urbanization, migration, global health emergencies and a deep imperative to decolonize institutions and spaces — starting with the historically Eurocentric Biennale itself — arguably make Lokko’s focus on hybrid forms of practice timely, be it planners as policy experts or artist-environmentalists.Lokko repeated to the Times her interest in using the Biennale platform to disabuse stigmas about African identity before discussing her own experiences with identity, path to architecture, and the potential she and others are striving to present to the world. “The ability to be several things at once — traditional and modern, African and global, colonized and independent — is a strong thread running through the continent and the Diaspora,” she told the paper. “We’re used to having to think about resources, about switching on a light with no guarantee of electricity. We’re able to grapple with change. That capacity to overcome, to negotiate, to navigate ones’ surroundings is going to take center stage.” Related on Archinect: "Decolonization Is a Gift"—CCNY's Lesley Lokko on Questioning Architecture's Inherited FuturesEvents kick off May 20th with the announcement of the Golden Lion and other select award winners.
Although the Biennale is hardly the first major exhibition to focus on Black and diasporic practitioners, the cascading crises of climate change, rapid urbanization, migration, global health emergencies and a deep imperative to decolonize institutions and spaces — starting with the historically Eurocentric Biennale itself — arguably make Lokko’s focus on hybrid forms of practice timely, be it planners as policy experts or artist-environmentalists.
Lokko repeated to the Times her interest in using the Biennale platform to disabuse stigmas about African identity before discussing her own experiences with identity, path to architecture, and the potential she and others are striving to present to the world.
“The ability to be several things at once — traditional and modern, African and global, colonized and independent — is a strong thread running through the continent and the Diaspora,” she told the paper. “We’re used to having to think about resources, about switching on a light with no guarantee of electricity. We’re able to grapple with change. That capacity to overcome, to negotiate, to navigate ones’ surroundings is going to take center stage.”
Events kick off May 20th with the announcement of the Golden Lion and other select award winners.
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