AA alumna Aimée Lam, who graduated from the Spatial Performance and Design (AAIS) programme in 2020, has been commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Panama as curator of the Panamanian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2023. This year’s pavilion will be titled Panama: Stories from Beneath the Water, and will address issues of division and integration within the former Panama Canal Zone.

Lam commented: ‘Since antiquity, the tropics have been widely recognised as a symbol of exotic beauty, dangerous animals and luxuriant vegetation. Portrayed as a faraway place, with different histories, languages and cultures, this geographical area represents an amalgamation of qualities that define the fantastic and mysterious nature of reality. Often considered from a western perspective to be a hostile environment to progress, the tropics represent everything that Europe and the United States are not (Lasso, 2019), the antithesis of civilised modernity. The exhibition of the Panamanian Pavilion should provide a counternarrative to this status quo, with Panama as a case study for a future vision of a “tropical” nation, by recovering and connecting its various historical influences.’

Image courtesy Aimée Lam.