By Nii B. Andrews.
Lesley Naa Norle Lokko – the accomplished Ghanaian architect and novelist, has been appointed the curator of the 18th edition of the prestigious Venice Architectural Biennale (VAB) slated for 2023.
She has already firmly established herself as an important academic and an innovative voice in world architecture.
Her appointment brings to the Biennale, “the gaze of an international personality who is able to interpret, through different roles, her own position in the contemporary debate on architecture and cities,” stated Roberto Cicutto, president of the VAB Board.
He further explained that the move, “takes as its starting point her own experience immersed in a continent that is increasingly becoming a laboratory of experimentation and proposals for the whole contemporary world”.
Lokko’s illustrious career to date has included founding the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg and teaching at many other universities around the world, including the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Cape Town and UTS in Sydney.
She was dean of the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College in New York from 2019 to 2020, before resigning in what she emphatically described as a “profound act of self-preservation”.
Details as in photo above.
Since leaving New York, she has been based in Accra and founded the African Futures Institute to provide impetus to her belief in Africa as a crucible of groundbreaking ideas and progressive action.
She is also editor-in-chief of the peer reviewed publication, FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture and has won several important international professional awards.
Lokko has since her appointment as VAB curator stated:
“New audiences are also emerging, hungry for different narratives, different tools and different languages of space, form, and place.
After two of the most difficult and divisive years in living memory, architects have a unique opportunity to show the world what we do best: put forward ambitious and creative ideas that help us imagine a more equitable and optimistic future in common.”
Her appointment is only the third time a woman has been chosen as VAB curator(!), following Kazuyo Sejima in 2010 and Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara in 2018.
********LESLEY LOKKO’S BOOKS********
Soul Sisters, Pan Macmillan, 2021; The Last Debutante, Orion, 2016; In Love and War, Orion, 2014; Little White Lies, Orion, 2013; An Absolute Deception, Orion, 2012; A Private Affair, Orion, 2011; One Secret Summer, Orion, 2010; Rich Girl, Poor Girl, Orion 2009; Bitter Chocolate, Orion, 2008; Saffron Skies, Orion, 2005; Sundowners, Orion, 2004.