Presented at Palazzo Grassi, The Promise of Change offers a substantial survey of Michael Armitage’s practice, bringing together paintings and drawings produced over the past decade as part of the Pinault Collection. On view in Venice through January 2027, the exhibition traces the artist’s evolving visual language through a body of work that moves between personal mythology, political observation, and art historical reference.
Known for his richly layered compositions, Armitage constructs scenes where documentary reality and dreamlike ambiguity coexist. His paintings frequently draw from East African social and political life while engaging with broader themes of migration, sexuality, power, and collective memory. Rather than offering straightforward narratives, the works unfold through fragmented symbolism, shifting temporalities, and emotionally charged imagery that resists singular interpretation.
Across the exhibition, large-scale paintings and drawings reveal the recurring concerns that have shaped Armitage’s practice: the relationship between individual experience and political structures, the persistence of myth in contemporary life, and the ways histories, both personal and collective, are continuously rewritten through image-making. References to Western painting traditions appear alongside visual languages rooted in East Africa, creating a tension between cultural specificity and broader historical dialogue.
At Palazzo Grassi, this layered body of work finds an appropriately expansive setting, allowing viewers to move through a decade of artistic inquiry shaped by instability, transformation, and the complexities of representation. The Promise of Change positions Armitage’s work as both intimate and political, grounded in lived realities yet constantly opening toward allegory, memory, and speculation.
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Photo: (c) David Zwirner, courtesy of Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection Venezia