Black Panther celebrates Afrofuturism through architecture and design
According to creatives, the Marvel film is helping to build a new narrative for Africa
By Evelyn Nogueira
Updated at Feb 18, 2020, 7:50 AM - Submitted at May 14, 2018, 5:46 PM
05 min de leitura
Scenery reproduced in Wakanda(Divulgação/)
Afrofuturism is a conceptwhich has been going on since the 1960s and rescues African history and mythology, and mixes them with technology and science. However, the aesthetics only began to be considered as a cultural movement in the 1990s, when Mark Dery, an American writer, defined it through the essay Black to the Future . Afrofuturism can be expressed through music, literature, cinema, among others, and proposes nothing more than a future where black people exist.
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The topic has been much discussed since the release of “Black Panther”, directed by Ryan Coogler. The film has been so successful that it has already reached the 10th highest-grossing position in the history of cinema.The story takes place in Wakanda, a country that doesn't exist, but according to Marvel's website, it is a small nation located in Equatorial Africa. Most of the kingdom was artificially produced, but that didn't stop designers from the country from thinking that the aesthetics highlighted in the work put Africa in the spotlight as a growing force in design, technology and fashion.
(Divulgação / CASACOR)
(Divulgação / CASACOR)
In an interview with Dezeen, Kenyan designer Mark Kamau said it is important to create a different narrative for Africa, and that is what Afrofuturism does. He also stated that design is the most powerful tool to transform the continent.
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And we don’t have to look too far into the future to agree with Kamau’s words. Big names in African professionals have already emerged in the fields of architecture and design. In 2016, Kunlé Adeyemi won the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for his design of a floating school. Furthermore, the latest architectural project for the Serpentine Pavilion was designed by Diébédo Francis Keré.