In Other Words began with a simple proposition: every act of communication involved a decision. Bringing together five practices, ABWAB considered what was made visible, what remained unspoken, what was translated, and how meaning was carried through material, form, gesture, image and the spaces we moved through.

For 2026, ABWAB moved from its established pavilion format into an indoor group exhibition curated by Caoimhe CJ Reynolds and Alexie Glass-Kantor. Rather than presenting separate national or regional pavilions, In Other Words brought the five practices into a shared spatial environment. Continuing ABWAB's role as a commissioning platform, the exhibition supported the development and presentation of site-specific works through an ongoing, collaborative process between the participating practitioners and curators. Each project responded to the original brief while engaging with the wider exhibition and the relationships that emerged between the works.

Featuring Dalia Rafeh, Grace Shieh, Kanaka Raghavan, UBIK and Varussi, founded by Owais Asif Khan and Samreen Junaid Wani, the exhibition brought together practices spanning art, design, architecture, writing, research and publishing. Across the five works, translation was understood not simply as movement between languages, but as a process through which knowledge and meaning were carried, transformed and reinterpreted across generations, cultures, materials and forms.

Together, the works created a choreography of encounters rather than a collection of discrete objects. As visitors moved between, through and around them, legibility shifted according to proximity and perspective, with no single viewpoint offering a complete reading. Repetition, inherited knowledge and material experimentation emerged as connecting threads, revealing how meaning could be communicated through gestures, systems of making and forms of expression that resisted conventional language. In Other Words invited audiences to consider not only what was communicated, but what was remembered, transformed or left unspoken.

Find out more about the commissions below:

Varussi |Taleem

Kanaka Raghavan | Cheent Devanagari

UBIK | Non/Sense

Dalia Rafeh | Shhhhhhhh

Grace Shieh | A Library of Paper Memories