The history of the Avant-garde has been, like the history of Post-colonialism, one of struggles and emancipation. In the ‘Post-Colonial Room’, WAI Architecture Think Tank (Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski) reflects on the history of the Avant-Garde as a tool for both, submission and liberation. The total installation uses Narrative Architecture to render the complex political, artistic, architectural, technological, ecological and anthropological characteristics of a post-colonial condition. The ‘Post-Colonial Room’ subverts the violent nature of a finite architectural space with militaristic (war room) and aesthetic (colonial room) origins, and questions the contemporary role of geopolitics, the construction of ecology, the aesthetic fetish of exotic environments and the romantic iconography of the avant-garde.

Post-Colonial Room is an exhibition by Hyde Chairs Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski / WAI Architecture Think Tank.