AFRITECT Venice Biennale Exhibition
Iwan Baan
AFRITECT, an exhibition produced for the 2023 Venice Biennale, explored architecture as a collective, language-driven practice rooted in African cultural values and visions for the future.
The exhibition AFRITECT—curated by MASS’s Co-Executive Director Christian Benimana—opened in May 2023 at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The installation presented a framework of thinking, of critiquing, and of interrogating current realities and imagining future possibilities. The gallery space invited visitors to leave the exhibition with more questions and curiosity, and a desire to imagine a progressive future within African architecture.
AFRITECT posited that the process of architecture requires shared vision and demands collective action. MASS’s experience on the African continent has taught us that inspiration lives, not inside us, but between us—that great architecture reveals the collective fingerprints of many people of different backgrounds and expertise. We know that “building” is more verb than noun—that the process is inseparable from the product.
Inspired by Ikinyarwanda, a language spoken in Rwanda, the exhibition highlights language, ideas, and cultural values as a way into defining shared purpose. Language is not simply a tool for communication but shapes the way we see ourselves in society and acts as a tool for creation.
In Ikinyarwanda, there is a phrase “Ijambo rirarema,” which can be translated to mean: “words create, words build, words give hope.” With that spirit, MASS created the portmanteau AFRITECT, a word which had no formal history or definition, to invite participation into a new way of thinking about architecture.
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Visitors to the exhibition enter a portal-like space defined by six vertical screens mounted on a series of interlocking panels. One central screen features team members from the MASS Africa studio, exploring the role of language in expanding our understanding of the concept of AFRITECT. The additional five screens reflect themes of individual and collective action in both natural and urban environments.
AFRITECT was presented as part of The Laboratory of the Future’s “Force Majeure” exhibition in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini in Venice, made possible through the vision and leadership of curator Lesley Lokko. The exhibition was open to the public from May through November 2023.
