Lubaina Himid
Lubaina Himid is a curator and artist known for her large-scale cut-out sculptures and bold paintings that challenge traditional depictions of people of colour in British art history. Born in Zanzibar in 1954, she moved to the UK in the same year, later graduating with a Theatre Design BA at Wimbledon College of Art (1976) and a Cultural History MA at the Royal College of Art (1984). In the 1980s she became a key figure in the Black British Arts Movement, which incorporated feminist and anti-racist activism to critique established artworld institutions and create opportunities for artists of colour. Throughout her career, Himid has examined the discrimination confronting Black women artists and speaks of how Black women are made ‘doubly invisible’ in culture. Her works celebrate Black creativity and reclaim the genre of European history painting to assert the presence of Black figures. Himid herself has noted that she was ‘trying to write myself, paint myself, and my compatriots, my fellow Black artists [...] into the history of British painting.’ In 2017 she became the first woman of colour to win the Turner Prize. She has spent much of her career in Preston, Lancashire, where she is Professor of Contemporary Art (University of Lancashire).
Both artworks by Lubaina Himid are part of the ‘Wing Museum' series: an imaginary touring exhibition of Black artists’ objects that were displayed as part of The Ballad of the Wing exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery in 1989. The series celebrates Black creativity whilst also critiquing acts of theft and denial that shape the collecting patterns of some Western museums.
Further Reading
Humid, Lubaina. The Thin Black Line. Exhibition Catalogue. Hebden Bridge: Urban Fox Press, 1989.
Inside the invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, .
Installation Images for ‘Ballad of the Wing’. Lubaina Himid (artist website).
Lubaina Himid: Workshop Manual. London: Koenig Books, 2019.
Aikens, Nick, and Elizabeth Robbles (eds.). The Place is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain. London: Sternberg Press and Van Abbemuseum, 2019.
Selected Collections
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
Tate
Whitworth, Manchester
