Lubaina Himid

Opens Saturday, May 9

Predicting History: Testing Translation explores the nature of belonging and how to make a home in a new place.

The exhibition acts as a guide to navigating life in places outside one's roots, illustrating a journey of learning and an acceptance of what home truly signifies. As the title suggests, nothing in life is easy or perfect: because predicting history is an impossibility, while translation is always an approximation.

A new series of large, multipaneled paintings of dazzling colours, showing surreal and 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. The exhibition makes tangible the daily tensions of how to belong.

Embracing the British Pavilion's neo-classical architecture, Himid represents Britain as somewhere welcoming and airy, brimming with potential, albeit with an underlying sense of unease as the sounds, texts and images subtly introduce tension.

Lubaina Himid CBE RA (b. 1954, Zanzibar) is a world-renowned British artist, known for a pioneering practice which addresses themes of race, history, feminism, cultural memory and identity. She frequently employs storytelling and historical research to challenge dominant Eurocentric narratives and highlight the overlooked contributions of Black figures in Western history.

Commissioner: Emma Dexter

Curator: Ese Onojeruo