Home comforts aren’t always all that comfortable. Here at the Venice Biennale, Lubaina Himid paints an awkward, tense, uncomfortable portrait of our damp old home nation. Her installation of monumental paintings and a wall of painted oars at the British pavilion is full of tailors and cooks and architects, the people who shape the country, keeping it fed, clothed and sheltered.

An audio piece burbles through the space with the sound of bucolic country life: seagulls, rigging slapping on masts, bird calls and buzzing flies. How lovely Great Britain is, how welcoming and kind and accepting.

But is it? The black figures at the heart of each painting don’t look as if they feel particularly welcomed and accepted. They exchange sideways glances as they cook and sew; they pause in moments of shared discomfort. The tailors – dressed in clothes they have made, clothes worn to fit in – are frozen in a shared look that asks: “What the hell are we doing here?”

The architects – standing next to plans for a mosque, a church and a factory – do the same. So do the two gardeners, and the sailors. Himid is asking, over and over again, whether you can ever truly belong, whether somewhere can ever be home if your roots are somewhere else.

The exhibition is anchored around 26 questions pasted on the wall, such as: “Can flies settle here?” and “Can poison taste delicious?” It’s the kind of soft philosophical musing that artists think sounds profound, but isn’t. The answer to both, obviously, is yes. Nevertheless, the questions lay bare the existential angst of the show, this feeling that if you’re different, you’ll never truly feel part of anything.

The basis of that idea seems to be that the feeling of not belonging is exclusive to people from elsewhere. But is that really the case? The show is specifically about migration and the emotional, societal status of people who move to Britain, but belonging is a lot more complicated than this exhibition wants to believe. It’s not just about migration or race. It’s about gender, sexuality, class; it’s about social discomfort, societal unease. Millions of people in Britain feel as if they don’t belong.

Visually, I don’t think this is Himid’s best work: she has executed this idea more successfully in the past. I’d also add that a painting show by one of Britain’s leading and most celebrated artists is not the most exciting thing that could have been done with the pavilion space.

But what does work here is the sense of anxiety that courses through the installation, the feeling of abject discomfort and frustration at a world that will never fully accept you. Despite all the bright colours, despite the calming sounds of lapping waves and cooing birds, Himid sees a darker truth to Britain: it might be green and pleasant, but for a lot of people, it’ll never feel like home.