Lubaina Himid feels very at home in a specific type of British institution. The celebrated artist and educator (whose work featured on the cover of the June 2024 500th issue of The World of Interiors) first made a name for herself exhibiting in regional museums, where architectural pomp often meets a relatively demure footprint.
‘There is a very specific type of building that I am used to,’ she says. ‘It features a range of relatively small rooms and interconnecting vistas.’ We are speaking in our own small annex, as we seek refuge from the throngs of visitors entering her new exhibition in the British Pavilion, which takes a prime position in the Venice Biennale’s Giardini. ‘This building is very similar,’ she adds. ‘I have often seen artists disguise the architecture, but I wanted every inch of it to be exposed. It holds its position and its grandeur, but has that very British way of playing it down, too.’
It is true that each and every pavilion within this famed garden is emblematic of its nation’s culture, but also of a specific time and place. Britain’s offering actually began life as a restaurant, and is adorned with the Neoclassical columns and grand terrace that one might expect from a Victorian structure. Its grand set of steps feels inherently authoritative, as does its lofty entrance hall, which is flanked by a circuit of five smaller rooms. ‘It enables visitors to be on a stage of sorts, and become part of a performance,’ says Himid, who has long referenced her training as a theatre designer in her work.
One might have expected the artist to reject the building’s established (and inherently colonial) history, given that she describes the exhibition as one that contends with a lack of ‘belonging’ and ideas of both losing and rebuilding home. Instead, she riffs off of this familiar structure, defining a set of characters that represent the building blocks of society, yet experience the vast contradictions and push-and-pull of carving out space in a world that often perceives them as ‘other’.
‘There is a sense of slightly uneasy, authoritarian perfection,’ Himid adds. ‘These people are grappling with how to cope with it all, and also what to remember and what to forget – what to take on from the new place; what to remember from the old.’ This is evident from the outset, in a grand painting titled Architects, which is hung at a deliberately high sight line so one has to look up when entering the hall.
It features two women, who are debating how to build the perfect house. ‘One is arguing that we need to build something that lasts forever and shows our contribution to this place,’ the artist explains, ‘but the other says we need to build something in which we can escape tomorrow if we need to.’
This pair are accompanied by a utopian, circular structure that Himid considers to be the ideal construction, conceived and built by women. ‘I’m often thinking about the perfect space for us to live, instead of inhabiting those designed by men,’ she says.
Elsewhere in the accompanying galleries, a pair of chefs take part in a similar deliberation. They seem to struggle with the concept of the perfectly executed lemon tart, in comparison with the elegant simplicity of this citrus fruit. Their work bench fades into a sugary pink, loosely painted background, which puts one in mind of a carefully conceived set, as opposed to a working kitchen.
Another pair – this time gardeners – approach a cactus with zeal, despite having none of the specialist tools required to care for such a plant. There is a beautiful resilience evident in this rather quotidian struggle, which is once again framed by emphatically gestural stripes that allude to a world far beyond the imagined garden. What could have been an image of fruitless toil instead feels uplifting. Both figures refuse to be bound by the rules that have come before, and soldier on regardless. As Himid posits: ‘They are going about tending to the plant in completely the wrong way, with completely the wrong tools and methods – but it's growing beautifully anyway.’
The British Council commission ‘Predicting History: Testing Translation’ by Lubaina Himid at the Venice Art Biennale 2026 runs to 22 November. For more information visit venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org
