The project will be led by UK-based curators Dr Guan Lee and Mike Lim, alongside a UK curatorial team including Maria McLintock and Ben Swaby Sellig. They will collaborate closely with Penang-based artisans Ng Chi Wang, Lee Shao Chin and Koh Eng Keat.
The team’s commission will explore impermanence in architecture, diaspora culture and how migration transforms living traditions present in Malaysia and the world today.
Drawing on Malaysian Chinese traditions of ritual paper architecture – temporary structures made from recycled paper on bamboo frames – the installation will take inspiration from the Hungry Ghost Festival, where ceremonial structures are created, used and released.
Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture Design Fashion at the British Council said:
‘As we celebrate 70 years of diplomatic relations between the UK and Malaysia, we are excited to work with a curatorial team whose proposal brings together architecture, ritual and cultural memory. Drawing on Malaysian traditions of paper structures created for the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, the exhibition will explore how acts of making and remaking can shape our relationships with nature, place and one another. Building on the success of the UK–Kenya collaborative exhibition for the British Pavilion 2025, I am thrilled to continue using the Pavilion as a space for cultural connection and collaboration, which lies at the heart of the British Council’s mission.’
What is the Venice Biennale and the British Pavilion?
The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) is one of the longest-running cultural festivals in the world and now attracts up to 600,000 international visitors each year. The world's top curators organise ambitious exhibitions that are often considered to be provocative or groundbreaking. The Venice Biennale is renowned for setting new global trends and launching the international careers of many pioneering artists and architects.
The official Venice Biennale exhibition is spread across two venues in the east of the city: the Arsenale and the Giardini. The Giardini, an area of parkland, houses the Central exhibition Pavilion and 29 national pavilions. Each of them, including the British Pavilion, presents its own showcase from a particular country or region.
Meet the curators
- Dr. Guan Lee, born and raised in Malaysia, is the founding director of Grymsdyke Farm, an architectural and experimental design practice in Buckinghamshire established in 2004 as part of his PhD dissertation. He trained in architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. His work is shaped by an intimate engagement with culture, material, and context. He is Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and teaches at the Royal College of Art in London. His teaching and research advance process driven design and thinking through making and site based production. At Grymsdyke Farm, he developed Reading Design, a summer school within its pedagogical programme, positioning architecture as a form of critical and material inquiry.
- Mike Lim is a British architect of mixed Malaysian heritage. He is co-founder and Director of IDK, an architecture studio based in London and Paris. Since establishing the practice in 2016 with James Pockson and Roddy Bow, he has worked on projects across the cultural sector, with a focus on developing frameworks grounded in the real economics of making. Recent projects include the David Bowie Centre at V&A East Storehouse (2025) and NIGO: From Japan with Love at the Design Museum (2026). Current practice projects include the Deep Time permanent gallery and archive at the London Museum (2028), the redesign of Level 2 of the Blavatnik Building at Tate Modern (2026), and the Korea Gallery at the V&A (2026). The studio has been recognised as one of ArchDaily’s Best New Practices (2024) and as a RIBA Journal Future Winner (2025).
- Maria McLintock is a curator, writer and lecturer working across architecture and spatial practice. Formerly Curator at the Design Museum, London, where she developed major exhibitions and publications, she has also held curatorial roles at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. She was appointed curator of the Design & Crafts Council Ireland’s galleries at Collect, Somerset House (2024–25), and serves on its Expert Curatorial Advisory Panel. She teaches critical and contextual studies of spatial practice across Central Saint Martins, UAL, and the Royal College of Art. She is co-initiator of System of Systems, a multidisciplinary research and curatorial project examining the systems shaping Europe’s migration landscape, and co-editor of Managing Displacement, developed through the project. She will commence a PhD in Architecture at The Bartlett, UCL, supported by a UCL Research Excellence Scholarship.
- Ben Swaby Selig is a London-based curator and sound artist, currently working at V&A East, a two-site project comprising a new museum and an open-access collections store. He is curator of the 2026 V&A East x Art Explora Commission with Jasleen Kaur, and previously co-led the Robin Hood Gardens co-production programme and curated Sound Clash. With a background in engineering (MEng, University of Bath, 2022), his research brings together material culture, technology and public engagement, shaping a practice attuned to the often invisible and inaudible connections between human and non-human worlds. He has delivered programmes, performances and installations across the UK, including at Tate Modern, the Royal College of Art and the London Design Festival, and was the 2022 Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellow and a 2025 British Council Human-Nature Fellow.
Meet the Malaysia-based artisan team
- Ng Chi Wang and Lee Shao Chin run Lian Yin Art in Bukit Mertajam in Penang. Master Ng, a former commercial pilot, took over the family business on his father in law’s retirement. A veteran paper and bamboo craftsperson, he has been working on Tai Su Yeah, a giant effigy measuring over 8 feet, since 1984.
- Koh Eng Keat is a paper construction artist and co-director of 358 Custom Effigies Workshop in George Town, Penang, which he operates alongside his father, Koh Ah Bah. The shop, established in 1998, produces various types of traditional paper effigies, paper sculptures and custom-made products that are lifelike and impressive. One of Koh Ah Bah’s paper sculptures from the 1980’s has been exhibited at the British Museum.