LUBAINA HIMID

British Pavilion | La Biennale di Venezia
61st International Art Exhibition

Predicting History: Testing Translation

Opens May 9, 2026
On view through Nov 22

LUBAINA HIMID's Predicting History: Testing Translation explores the nature of belonging and how to make a home. The exhibition acts as a guide to navigating life in places outside one's roots. As the title suggests, nothing in life is easy or perfect: because predicting history is an impossibility, while translation is always an approximation.

For the British Pavilion’s Commissioner, Emma Dexter, Himid’s “vibrant, immersive practice brings together dazzling colour, layered sound and narrative to evoke thoughts about the UK as a space of both possibility and tension. This exhibition explores what it means to belong, challenging dominant histories and representing the UK in a clear, contemporary light—open, complex, and shaped by many voices.”

A new series of large, multipaneled paintings with magical settings exemplifies Himid’s artistic approach. She acts as both writer and performance director, establishing characters, crafting narratives, imagining dialogues and, in collaboration with artist Magda Stawarska, creates a surreal soundscape. As Himid writes of exhibition’s core themes: “In private we surround ourselves with real and invented memories, artefacts, recipes and music, which reassures us that we belong in the new place and reminds us that despite this, the old place can never be erased entirely . . . This is that place; we cannot leave it. These are the plans; we continue to make them.”

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