SAF and Mudam Luxembourg host Nets for Night and Day exhibition
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) has announced the opening of the exhibition Nets for Night and Day by Lubaina Himid CBE RA and Magda Stawarska at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (Mar. 7 – Aug. 24). Following an initial presentation titled Plaited Time/Deep Water in Sharjah in 2023, Nets for Night and Day is the first full-scale European survey of the artists' collaborative practice. The exhibition, organised by SAF and Mudam Luxembourg, explores over a decade of creative exchange between British painter Lubaina Himid (b. 1954, Zanzibar), a leading figure of the British Black Arts Movement, and multidisciplinary Polish artist Magda Stawarska (b. 1976, Ruda Śląska, Poland), whose practice combines moving image, soundscapes, and screen printing.
Conceived as visual and performance art, Nets for Night and Day unfolds memory narrated through paintings, drawings, sculpture, silkscreen printing, photography, and sound installation. Comprising over fifty artworks produced between the late 1990s and today, the exhibition invites visitors on a journey aboard ships, across carts, and into dreamscapes shaped by the artists' collective imagination, with a nod to the question of migration and movement, a critical issue of contemporary times. At the heart of the exhibition is a newly imagined presentation of Zanzibar (1999 – 2023), first shown in Sharjah. The series of nine painted diptychs by Himid narrates journeys — both real and imagined — to and from her birthplace, Zanzibar.
Visitors will be greeted by the sound of rainfall, recorded from England to Zanzibar, off the coast of East Africa. The sonic backdrop, composed by Stawarska in dialogue with Himid, is a 38-minute multi-channel 'libretto' for the paintings. A voice-over, alternating between male and female voices, presents itself. Stawarska says that 'the process of listening is often at the core of my practice. I am interested in how sound triggers memories while simultaneously anchoring us in a place.' A mother's mourning in Himid's voice resonates through the sound installation, women's tears that fill the ocean. 'The result is often heart-wrenching,' says exhibition curator Dr. Omar Kholeif, SAF Director of Collections and Senior Curator.
In another section, screen prints and patterns intertwine with paintings of ships and boats that bear multiple lives and histories, suggestive of diverse experiences and encounters. 'The idea of bringing boats into the story became very important,' says Himid. 'Boats are places of work, places of rescue, places to live, places for fun, but also places of deep tragedy and horror — places to escape to, places to escape from. I see them as temporary moving homes.' In happier contexts, boats could have been the camels of the sea, carrying Bedouin.
Visitors here are invited to engage with paintings, photographs, and sculptures in a scenography relating to imaginary and real contexts of movement and travel. Travelling through time and space, works including Himid's evocative Sharjah Carts (2023) and Stawarska's moving image works in the Jardin des Sculptures, invite visitors to wander into dreamscapes, where they can add their own memories of real life experiences and imaginary movement. The location of the exhibition reflects the social and cultural contexts of Luxembourg, a country with a diverse immigrant community. Through the juxtaposition of memory, paint, sound and movement, the exhibition attempts to capture the poignancy of lived lives, revealing songs of longing and belonging, loss and gain and the power of memory to resuscitate history and selfhood.
The exhibition is coordinated by Julie Kohn, Curatorial Assistant, Mudam Luxembourg and design is by Souraya Kreidieh, SAF Senior Collections Researcher and Spatial Designer. Himid CBE RA lives and works in the UK. For over four decades, she has depicted contemporary everyday life and aimed to fill gaps in art history. A painter, cultural activist, witness, storyteller and historian, in 2017, she won the Turner Prize, in 2023 the Maria Lassnig Art Prize, and the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize.
Stawarska's multi-disciplinary practice combines moving image, sound, silkscreen prints and painting. She explores the connections between personal memory, place, and sound, often uncovering hidden and conflicting histories. Her work is in public collections including the Government Arts Collection, London, the Arts Council Collection, London and the SAF Collection. She lives and works in the UK. Through its exhibitions, publications and artistic and educational programme, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean fosters research and dialogue, tracing the changing nature of art and society. Like Luxembourg itself, the museum is located at the centre of Europe and has an outward-looking vision.
SAF is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. It supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the culture of the region and encourages an understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation's core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications. Established in 2009, SAF is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons; all its exhibitions are free and open to the public. Hoor Al Qasimi is SAF President and Director.
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