The British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale: Dancing Before the Moon

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This year’s British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a riposte to mainstream architectural practice, and a call to embrace more diverse ways of thinking, writes Ben Flatman

As I’ve sadly been unable to visit the Venice Biennale, I am interviewing some of the creative team behind this year’s British Pavilion remotely from the UK. Jayden Ali, curator and architect, and two of the other contributors, Madhav Kidao and Yussef Agbo-Ola, are all talking to me from a sunlit room in Venice, where their installations form part of the British Pavilion exhibition.

Together, they convey a strong conviction and shared sense of purpose for their work, which has taken Lesley Lokko’s wider theme of “The Laboratory of the Future” – with its focus on Africa and the African-diaspora – and used it as a launch pad to delve into the United Kingdom’s diverse cultures, and often conflicted relationship with its own complex history.

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