Lubaina Himid

So I have to think about the space that I'm making it for.

The Pavilion itself.

Those practical things of how big is it?

How do audiences move around it?

then what am I interested in at this moment?

And I'd had a few ideas for what I might do for the British Pavilion, if anyone ever got round to asking me.

And when they did ask me, I thought I had to throw those ideas out.

I realised that those ideas were for then and that the idea that I had is for now.

About the state of what it is like to be in this place now.

So that's where the personal kind of crashes into the political.

It's also an installation that's about making and what making can do.

You'll see a lot of paintings.

No freestanding figures.

They have a very precious floor and they don't like you to screw things into the floor.

So, no, they're paintings and there's a multi-layered sound work that permeates throughout the building.

You can see references to paintings that I've made before or motifs that I've made before.

You're encouraged, really, to ask questions about yourself, who you are, whether you feel like you belong, whether you want to leave the place you're in or stay in the place you're in, and how you got there.

Well, I think that people essentially change things.

Some of those people who engage with art in a way that they lean into it, they want to find themselves within it, understand situations within it,

See that how artists have made something from nothing.