Double Vision: “A veil of carbon and clay.”

What do you see when you look at this building? The neo-classical façade or the veil that enshrouds it?

The veil’s shape is inspired by the form of the Kenyan Maasai people’s traditional manyatta dwellings. Built from locally sourced branches applied with mud, cow dung, urine and ash, manyattas are characterised by their single entrance and curved profile. They can be quickly built and rebuilt to suit a nomadic way of life.

The agricultural waste briquettes, clay, and glass beads from which the veil is formed have multiple origins and resonances. The briquette and clay beads have emerged from the Kenyan earth and been fashioned by Kenyan hands, echoing the traditional practices of Maasai women, who are the original master builders of their homesteads. The glass beads are from India, and in this context recall the ornamental beads made in Murano which were used historically as a crude imperial currency for exchange of metals, minerals and enslaved persons.

Casting the British Pavilion in a black, brown and red hue, the veil makes visible the “other earths” that empire displaced, inverting the project of colonial conquest that forced colonised peoples to see oneself through another’s eyes. The veil obscures but it also reveals.