La Biennale di Venezia 2023

Opening in Venice, Italy on 20 May 2023, this exhibition critically reflects on the imperial history of Tropical Modernism, examining the ways in which this architectural style was adapted by new African nations in the period that followed Ghana becoming the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence in 1957. Tropical Modernism is organised in collaboration with the Architectural Association (AA), London, which established an influential Department of Tropical Architecture in 1953, and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, where the AA was invited to set up an outpost a decade later.

Presented as the Special Project at the Applied Arts Pavilion, the exhibition responds to the theme set by the Biennale's Artistic Director Lesley Lokko, who writes that "Africa is the laboratory of the future" in her curatorial statement, and it lays the groundwork for a larger exhibition on Tropical Modernism scheduled to take place at the V&A, South Kensington in 2024.

In the late 1940s, in the context of British West Africa, husband and wife architectural duo Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew developed the tools of Tropical Modernism, adapting an international modernist aesthetic to the hot and humid conditions of the continent. Their distinctive architectural language of climate control – adjustable louvers (vents which allow air-flow), wide eaves and brises soleils (a device for shutting out sunlight) – was propagated through the Department of Tropical Architecture at the AA in London, where Fry was the programme's first director. Here, they taught European architects to work in the colonies and trained a new generation of post-colonial architects.

Fry and Drew's architectural innovations, which attracted international interest, appeared against the political background of decolonial struggle, which would soon come to fruition. Their investment could not hold back the 'winds of change' that blew across Africa as two-thirds of the continent won their freedom in the decade that followed Kwame Nkrumah becoming the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana in 1957. In Tropical Modernism, Nkumrah saw the possibility not only for nation-building, but an expression of his Pan-African ideology, commissioning architects from Eastern Europe to work alongside Ghanaian architects to create monumental structures that were intended as beacons of a free Africa.

Curated by Dr Christopher Turner (V&A), Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed (AA), the Venice presentation is centred around a 35m-long brise soleil installation, into whose apertures are embedded lightboxes displaying photographs, plans and other ephemera outlining the story of Tropical Modernism. In the main space of the pavilion is a three-channel film that the V&A recorded in Ghana, featuring panoramic portraits of 14 buildings, as well as interviews with protagonists and experts (including 95-year-old architect John Owusu Addo, and Samia Nkrumah, President Kwame Nkrumah's daughter), as well as previously unseen archival footage from the 1950s and 60s that documents life around Independence.

Dr Christopher Turner, Keeper of Art, Architecture, Photography & Design at the V&A and Lead Curator of Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power said:

Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed, researchers and architects at the Architectural Association (AA), London and co-curators of Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa, said:

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