"I felt rather overwhelmed."
Faiza Butt will represent Pakistan at the 61st Venice Biennale, which begins this year on May 9, 2026, in Italy.
The official title of the pavilion is ‘Punj AB — A Sublime Terrain’, and it is curated by Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano.
This prestigious event marks only the second time that Pakistan has officially participated in the influential global art gathering.
Expectations remain high because the Venice Biennale is often described as the “Olympics of the art world” by many.
The artist admitted that representing a nation brings a special kind of pressure that most regular exhibitions do not.
“Artists are mostly quite egocentric. They have these ideas, and then they exhibit those ideas.
“But when given this opportunity, I felt rather overwhelmed upon realising that this is not the ‘Faiza Butt Pavilion.’ It’s the Pakistan Pavilion.”
The showcase will be held at the Ex Farmacia Solveni, which is a very stately space built in tradition.
Visitors can experience this unique cultural display in Venice from May 9 through the date of November 22 2026.
Faiza views this international gathering as a major cultural event that is cleverly disguised as a simple art event.
Nations come to this event to showcase their excellence and to signal their identity to the entire global audience.
She chose to focus on the history of Punjab because it is a terrain that she knows very well.
The artist stated that she cannot talk about Sindh or Balochistan because those areas are not her lived reality.
Migration is a central theme because her ancestors and she herself have moved across many borders over the years.
“Migration is in my DNA. My great grandparents migrated, my grandparents migrated, my parents migrated, and I migrated also.”
The work challenges the narrow framing of history in the state curriculum of Pakistan today.
She argues that starting history with Muhammad bin Qasim is not enough to help people understand their true identity.
A central motif in the pavilion concerns agriculture and the specific history of the cotton root.
She believes that artists should keep bringing something new to the pool of information through constant and deep research.
Her presentation will utilise scale, colour, light and the moving image to create a powerful experience for the viewers.
This show is as much about the spatial choreography as it is about the individual pieces of art displayed.
Faiza has attended this event for 12 years, so she understands how to avoid getting things wrong in Venice.
“I think I’m quite fortunate that this was entrusted to me, perhaps because I have a lot of experience of showing in Venice.
“If you just throw someone in there and tell them to just go and do something, there’s a huge possibility they’d get it wrong.
“And you better not get things wrong at the Venice Biennale.”
Faiza Butt hopes that the work will eventually travel to Pakistan and engage the local audience after the biennale.
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