Some artists might struggle to deal with the historical and political baggage that comes with representing at a national pavilion, but Akomfrah, a totemic figure in British art, was only too happy to lean into that contextual weight. He created Listening All Night to the Rain, a disorientating walk-through featuring 62 screens that played 31 hours of footage and archival material, with references ranging from Stokely Carmichael to Mark Rothko, and which meditated on the artist’s enduring themes of memory, migration, racial injustice and climate change, while asking audiences to ‘attune’ to an ‘ethics of sonics’ that served as the installation’s narrative. Akomfrah’s interest in the formal texture of filmmaking, as much as its social and political message, was honed not least during his years as a member of the Black Audio Film Collective (with former members David Lawson and Lina Gopaul still working alongside him). The Independent thought the Pavilion was ‘a visual feast, exploring the best and worst of our country at a time when the notion of British identity has never been so contested’.