Professor Kathryn Yusoff Co-Curates Major UK–Kenya Exhibition for Venice Architecture Biennale
How can architecture help repair the damage of colonial extraction? Professor Kathryn Yusoff joins an international curatorial team for GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair, a major exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale that reimagines architecture as a force for decolonial repair and planetary care.
A leading academic from the School of Geography, Professor Kathryn Yusoff, is co-curating GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair, a groundbreaking exhibition for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. The project explores how architecture can confront and repair the colonial legacies of geological extraction.
Opening in May 2025 at the British Pavilion, the exhibition is part of the British Council’s UK–Kenya Season and marks the first time the Biennale platform has been used explicitly to celebrate UK–Africa cultural co-creation. As an official event of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, it brings urgent global conversations about geology, justice, and design to one of the world’s most influential architectural stages.
Rooted in a UK–Kenya curatorial partnership, the exhibition reimagines the Pavilion as a space for alternative geologies, earth-based design, and decolonial practice. Professor Yusoff joins Owen Hopkins (Farrell Centre, Newcastle University) and Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi (Cave_bureau, Nairobi) to challenge extractive traditions and advance new approaches to architecture centred on environmental repair and planetary care.
At the centre of the project is the Great Rift Valley, a vast geological formation stretching from Turkey to Mozambique, used here as both a geographical and conceptual anchor. Installations by international artists and architects—including Mae-ling Lokko (Yale), Gustavo Crembil (Rensselaer), Thandi Loewenson (RCA), and the Palestine Regeneration Team (University of Westminster/Bartlett UCL)—highlight vernacular knowledge, ecological resistance, and cross-cultural solidarity.
The exhibition draws on themes from Professor Yusoff’s acclaimed book Geologic Life, which explores the intersections of geology, race, and empire. This scholarship brings a critical academic perspective to the curatorial team’s vision.
“It is a highlight of my career to bring the ideas of geologic life into public view with such an inspiring team,” said Professor Yusoff. “At its heart, the exhibition asks: who gets to imagine the world? It gives space to those rarely recognised as architects—Maasai women, Congolese metal workers, Palestinian builders, Zambian waste pickers—and presents geo-stories that reorient design in the context of a planet on fire.”
Alongside the exhibition, the curators have launched Insurgent Geologies, a publishing partnership with e-flux Architecture to support global dialogue on land, climate, and post-extractive futures.
GBR: Geology of Britannic Repair runs from 10 May to 23 November 2025 at the British Pavilion, Venice.