2018 Venice Biennale Curation:

Environmental Justice is a Civil Right

Working with featured artist, the Barbudan photographer Mohammid Walbrook, Antigua and Barbuda’s inaugural National Pavilion at the 16th International Architectural Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia explores environmental justice as a civil right through an investigation into the acute crisis of climate change facing this island nation.

Situated in a fifteenth-century monastery in the heart of Venice, Antigua & Barbuda’s National Pavilion explores three sites in Antigua and Barbuda through a combination of architectural models, artefacts, and drawings to examine the relationship between architecture and the environment and the unresolved case of Mother Nature versus Human Intervention.

1. Rebuilding Barbuda

2. Expansion of St. John’s Urban Botanical Gardens

3. Government House Restoration Initiative, included on the 2018 World Monuments Watch

The sites presented are linked by innovative stakeholder partnerships that seek to address present-day environmental challenges. In keeping with this multi-disciplinary spirit, the Pavilion serves as a space for dialogue and a meeting place for a diverse audience that includes high school and university students, the differently abled, architects, environmental groups, the art-going public, and visitors to Venice.

Seminars in May and September host global leaders, scholars, and students for lectures and panel presentations on a breadth of topics such as biodiversity, food security, responsible tourism, conservation, and historic preservation. These conversations will reveal unique models of environmental sustainability and shall result in a National Pavilion catalogue with a broad range of global contributors.

A student program coordinated by The New School University involving a network of high school principals will allow students from Antigua, Barbuda, Manhattan, and Venice to collaborate and participate via online video conference calls, culminating in a robust youth presentation at the Biennale Architettura 2018. Additional educational programming includes video content produced by Vanessa H. Smith working with the students and environmental activists. 

Supporters of the Antigua and Barbuda National Pavilion and associated programming include the Ministries with responsibilities for Culture, Health, Environment, and Education, the Office of the Governor General, Tides Foundation, We Are Here Venice, Halo Foundation, World Monuments Fund, The New School and Parsons School of Design, Weill Cornell Brain and Spine Center and NY Hospital, NYC Lab High School for Collaborative Studies, High Schools of Antigua, Barbuda, Ireland, and Venice, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Antigua and Barbuda Venice Biennale Charitable Trust, and many generous private donors.