Venice Architecture Biennale honors 2023 Golden Lion & Silver Lion participations winners

To coincide with the opening of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, the jury of this year’s Venice Biennale announced the winners of the prestigious Golden and Silver Lion participation awards during a special ceremony held on Saturday, May 20th, in Venice.

Attendees were on hand to witness the awarding of the Golden Lion for the best participant and Silver Lion for a promising young participant, which this year went to the Stockholm- and Bethlehem-based DAAR co-founders Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal as well as the Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous, respectively.

Petti and Hilal were commended over the studio’s “long-standing commitment to deep political engagement with architectural and learning practices of decolonization in Palestine and Europe.”

The duo was joined by Jeyifous, who was given the Silver Lion for a multimedia installation exploring a “worldbuilding practice that expands public perspectives and imaginations, offering visions of a decolonized and decarbonized future” via a hypothetical All-Africa Protoport (AAP) lounge.

The jury also awarded three special mentions to South Africa’s Wolff Architects, Sammy Baloji of the Brussels-based Twenty Nine Studio, and the Zimbabwe-born, London-based designer Thandi Loewenson, who was also recently named as one of 93 Graham Foundation individual grantees for 2023.

They were each joined by the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award winner Demas Nwoko and the newly-announced Golden Lion for National Participation winning Brazilian pavilion, which Gabriela de Matos and Paulo Tavares curated, at a special ceremony held in Venice's Ca’ Giustinian pavilion.

The exhibition closes on November 26th. More of our coverage of this year’s Biennale can be found here.