This exhibition catalogue accompanies Lubaina Himid’s solo exhibition commissioned for the British Pavilion and the 61st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, on view May 9–November 22, 2026.

A leading figure in contemporary British art and the UK’s representative to 61st Venice Biennale, Lubaina Himid is a self-described “painter and cultural activist,” playing a pivotal role in the Black British Art Movement since the 1980s. Over the past decade she has earned international acclaim for her vivid portrayals of themes of race, feminism and cultural memory, exposing the human toll of empire while affirming the centrality of Black subjects.

This richly illustrated catalogue accompanies Predicting History: Testing Translation, Himid's 2026 solo presentation at the Venice Biennale. The exhibition was conceived in response to the British Pavilion’s neo-classical architecture, and features new works across media that lend lush visibility to issues of migration and belonging. Vast multi-panel canvases depict gardeners, chefs, architects, and others in the act of skilled creation, and a sound work (made with Magda Stawarska) engages national identity through samples of folk ballads and field recordings of local landscapes. Other new paintings explore the communicative power of kanga cloth through their patterned surfaces, or use found boating oars as unconventional supports that connote displacement and tactile use. The catalogue documents the works in situ through installation photography and traces their making through studio ephemera, accompanied by original essays from acclaimed group of international scholars—Dorothy Price, Zoé Whitley, Nick Aikens, and Christine Eyene—and an intimate dialogue with an artist.