In the early decades of the 20th century, the imperial powers organized colonial exhibitions to celebrate the riches that development of far-flung lands brought home to the parent country. A century later, the early decades of the 21st century are a time of decolonizing exhibitions, in which that brutal history and toxic legacy are examined in a new light. Putting Africa and its diaspora at the center of the Venice Architecture Biennale, as chief curator Lesley Lokko has done for the 2023 edition, is part of that process of reexamination, the first time in its four-decade existence that this prestigious architecture event has focused on the world’s second-largest continent and the descendants of its displaced peoples.

As Lokko, who is Scottish-Ghanaian, pointed out, decolonization and decarbonization are linked issues. “The Black body, the African body, was Europe’s first unit of energy, the first unit of labor,” she said at the opening-day press conference. “So I think for many Africans and people in the diaspora, that relationship between colonization and exploitation of resources, which includes human resources, is physical, tangible, and corporeal. It’s with that in mind that I approached these two topics, to understand each not just as a process, but the interconnections that are often hidden between them.”