Sechaba Maape to co-curate Venice Biennale of Architecture’s SA Pavilion

Representing SA at the Venice Biennale of Architecture are Dr Sechaba Maape, Dr Emmanuel Nkambule, and Stephen Steyn as co-curators of the SA Pavilion at the Giardini della Biennale, supported by 2BLN, Spies Architects and Breinstorm Brand Architects.

The 18th International Architecture Exhibition runs from May 20 to November 26 and is themed The Laboratory of the Future. Within this framework, the SA Pavilion's exhibition title is The Structure of a People, which will engage contemporary conditions such as ecological change and inequality. Architect, director of Afreetekture, and senior lecturer at Wits School of Architecture and Planning, Maape, spoke to us about curating the multifaceted exhibition and his practice that envisions decolonising architectural theory and practice by garnering wisdom from Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

Afreetekture, what Maape calls his experimental practice, is an endeavour to practice under conditions that do not constrain his freedom to think and imagine — which he identifies as one of the challenges with mainstream architecture practices. Though he concedes that, “it is important for us to be based in reality and engage the current world, and many [architectural] practices are doing so and trying to be innovative,” he believes that we also need architecture practices that deal with highly speculative work, especially in our country.

“You see, SA, especially the apartheid version of SA, was invented by very creative men, some of them having developed some of their ideas in the same space where I work as a lecturer, the University of the Witwatersrand. These men created a white utopia, a fascist state that segregated people according to race, and sustained a privileged experience for the minority in the country.” And even now, post-apartheid, we are still dealing with the same conditions, especially the spatial reasoning created by apartheid.

In Abantutopia, Maape envisions an alternate reality of a SA where we are free of these structures, where all South Africans live according to their values, some shared and some self-determined.

Maape's philosophical values were shaped by his upbringing in the small town of Kuruman in the Northern Cape. “I think I have always been curious about the world and grew up in a home where I felt very connected to life. When I moved to the city, which was very Westernised, I felt a deep sense of alienation. It was not really because there were no people around me, but I think it was because I was slowly reconditioned into a worldview that sees the world as dead.”

That prompted his career, his research, and ultimately his practice, which contributed to finding his way back into sensing life in the world the way he did in his childhood. And it provides space for reverence and peace with our universe, to mitigate the neurosis.  

The SA Pavilion at the Biennale is divided into three zones that will facilitate three cohesive exhibitions, under the theme The Structure of a People. The zones; The Past is the Laboratory of the Future, The Council of Beings and Political Animals, is where participants, attendees and audiences will get to witness an applied approach to Maape and his colleagues' architectural theories and practices.

Upon entering the pavilion, it will be simulated into Wonderwerk Cave in Kuruman, a ritual space that has been a key focus in Maape's research and practice. The space uses blackness to enhance the experience of its inhabitants, therefore serving as a metaphoric “way of building resilience, and engaging life in a way that is not antagonistic. Unlike ideas Western philosophers have developed like Nihilism, nothingness, meaninglessness, initiates are taught to move through the void peacefully. This is the mark of being a mature human, able to resist the neurotic tendencies to mitigate uncertainty and the desire to have full control of life.”  The second zone, The Past is the Laboratory of the Future is a culmination of Maape and Nkabinde’s mutual interest in the pre-colonial site and society, the Bokoni, situated in the northwestern and southern parts of Mpumalanga. Having both researched the Bokoni previously, the curators interacted with researchers who mapped the exhibition site and produced 3D representations.

“What was however most fascinating is that the Bokoni left traces of themselves in the form of stone engravings which depict something that looks like a town plan. What researchers say about these depictions is that instead of being representations of the physical spaces, although that’s what they look like, they are more a representation of the relationships of the people who lived in the settlement,” Maape explains.

The Bokoni site veers away from the logic and layout of the town being understood as a physical object. Instead, it is seen as relational, and the homesteads are structured to resemble a family tree. This distinction is a key aspect of the pavilion and the central philosophy the curators intend to share with the world. The idea of structuring spaces according to familial relationships, where architecture is an extension of the social structure inspired the pavilion’s title The Structure of the People.

The Bokoni’s structural foresight offers insight to those who welcome it, much like the other forms of indigenous knowledge systems, which Maape believes may have value for today’s society.

He states: “An important idea is that of reassessing the ontological boundaries or categories that have persisted till now. What constitutes something to be alive, to be dead matter, to have subjectivity, and hence to have rights?” He adds that “rethinking ideas like site, context, space [and] ground within the context of ontology, and reassessing our understanding of the personhood of our landscape and planet, will draw architecture into a new paradigm.”