For the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the South African Pavilion explores the architectural representation of social structures through an exhibition titled “The Structure of a People.” Prior to the exhibition, the pavilion curators, Mr. Stephen Steyn, Dr. Emmanuel Nkambule, and Dr. Sechaba Maape, conducted a national architecture competition titled “Political Animals,” aimed at gathering artifacts crafted by lecturers and architecture students to represent the structures of their schools or universities. The resulting models and miniature architectures, produced by ModelArt, will be exhibited within Zone III, Political Animals, as part of the South African Pavilion.
The space of the pavilion is divided into three zones. The first one, titled The Past is the Laboratory of the Future, traces links to the architectural representation of social structures in pre-colonial southern African societies. Zone II, The Council of (Non-Human) Beings, contains contemporary drawings of the topic of animism in architectural practice. Lastly, Political Animals presents the curricular structures of South African architecture schools as architectural objects. The six selected models are “Look the Other Way,” “Resonance,” “MAAT 18”, “Organized Chaos,” “Amplified Voices,” and “Commemorating Cultures.”
The official press release of the exhibition further explains the inspiration for the chosen theme of the South African Pavilion: “Scattered over ten thousand square kilometers of grassland in Mpumalanga, about two hundred kilometers east of Johannesburg, lay the ruins of a vast civilization known as the Bokoni. Of particular architectural interest at this site is a large number of low-relief rock carvings depicting building plans. It is widely agreed that the plans were not intended for construction, but constitute a theoretical architectural representation, demonstrating that Bokoni herdsmen made drawings of social structures as they are represented by architectural plans.
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Lesley Lokko on the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale: "I Hope It Provokes the Audience to Think Differently and More Empathetically"It is with this tradition in mind that the South African Pavilion is themed around the architectural representation of existing and speculative social structures. The exhibition, titled The Structure of a People, will engage contemporary conditions such as ecological change and inequality. The inclusion of formerly peripheral value systems relies heavily on the appreciation of pre-colonial values, through the study of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and their role in the reimagining of our contemporary human settlements, institutions, and communities into the future.”
We have a key opportunity with this Pavilion to present previously unseen artifacts and thinking that is deeply entrenched in vital Indigenous Knowledge Systems in South Africa – and show how the past can truly be the laboratory of the future and help us to rethink critical issues that we face as a global society. - Maape, Nkambule, and Steyn, Curators of the South African Pavilion
Other national pavilion exhibitions are also drawing inspiration from the localized culture and their relationship with land and architecture. The Irish Pavilion set out to explore the diverse cultures, communities, and experiences of Ireland’s remote islands in search of finding new ways of inhabiting the world; the Ukrainian Pavilion explores the role of protective structures in a society under threat, while the Hungarian Pavilion presents the country’s ethnography and traditional crafts and practices as a starting point for expanding the global community’s creativity and the variety of cultural conversations.
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