Latest news with #Himid
Gulf Today
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
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.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Artists should let the cat out of the bag': Lubaina Himid to represent Britain at 2026 Venice Biennale
Lubaina Himid, the artist known for her large stage-set-style installations that draw attention to figures overlooked by history, has been picked by the British Council to represent the UK at the 2026 Venice Biennale. 'I'm energised and so up for it,' the artist said of the challenge to fill the British pavilion with her work at 'the Olympics of art'. She added: 'I was ready to do it when I was 30 – it's just that the British Council weren't ready for me.' Himid, 70, is only the second Black woman to represent the UK at Venice. Sonia Boyce was the first, in 2022, and received the top prize of the Golden Lion for her multimedia installation Feeling Her Way, a celebration of the Black female musicians who had inspired her. At the 2024 biennial, Britain was represented by John Akomfrah. All three artists are pioneers of Black British art, for instance participating in the First National Black Art Convention, which was held at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1982. Their work was often overlooked or marginalised by the predominantly white mainstream art establishment, an experience which Himid says will influence her approach to the pavilion. 'We absolutely thought of ourselves as artists, but we were often in places that weren't dedicated to the showing of art,' Himid said, citing multidisciplinary arts spaces like the Africa Centre and ICA in London. 'You might come in for a cup of tea, or be queueing for cinema tickets, and you'd look at our work on the wall. We realised that those were the kinds of environments in which we could speak to the people we wanted to speak to, because they were welcoming.' Himid is confident she can rise to the task of representing Britain. 'Why not?' she told the Guardian. 'I'm British. I've lived here since I was four months old.' She was born in Zanzibar and is now based in Preston, where she teaches at the University of Central Lancashire. The artist believes that people whose national identity is called into question due to their race often have a sharp antennae for the public mood. 'I don't live here complacently. I for ever have my eye out for what's happening. What's the political situation? How are people feeling? What's missing from museum collections? Sometimes, those of us who feel we don't belong have several kinds of narratives running at the same time. I have all sorts of things to say about Britain's history and the pavilion itself.' Some of Himid's work, such as her 2007 sculpture Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service, and her paintings Le Rodeur, have drawn attention to the UK's involvement in the slave trade. In recent years, there has been a rightwing pushback to the 'woke' uncovering of such narratives, both by artists and bodies such as the National Trust, that has intensified since the election of Donald Trump. 'The right are always trying to unravel things,' Himid said. 'But the point of artists is to open stuff up, let the cat out of the bag, spill the milk. It either opens up good conversations, or everyone just has to deal with it. The 1970s, when I was at art school, were tough times. So were the 1980s. But I kept making the work I wanted to make – there's nothing else I can do.' The choice of artist to represent their country can be a vexed one. Khaled Sabsabi was due to represent Australia at Venice next year, but was sacked after the shadow arts minister complained about a 2007 video work that had included images of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. 'Artists have to say what we want to say, and sometimes people don't want us to say it,' Himid said. 'No one's ever told me to tone down my work. They let me show it and then they take the piss.' This year, Himid will revisit a 1985 show of art by Black women which she was forced to stage in a corridor at the ICA which ran from the bar to the toilet – a far cry from the expansive halls of the British pavilion. Himid will spend the rest of the year making work for Venice before the biennale opens next April. What kind of work does she plan to make? 'I always paint, so there will be paint,' the artist revealed, hinting: 'I'm interested in how surrealism meets the everyday, the space between a question and an answer. I've got a lot of work to do. It's nerve-racking, but exciting. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think I had something interesting to say.'
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Artists should let the cat out of the bag': Lubaina Himid to represent Britain at 2026 Venice Biennale
Lubaina Himid, the artist known for her large stage-set-style installations that draw attention to figures overlooked by history, has been picked by the British Council to represent the UK at the 2026 Venice Biennale. 'I'm energised and so up for it,' the artist said of the challenge to fill the British pavilion with her work at 'the Olympics of art'. She added: 'I was ready to do it when I was 30 – it's just that the British Council weren't ready for me.' Himid, 70, is only the second Black woman to represent the UK at Venice. Sonia Boyce was the first, in 2022, and received the top prize of the Golden Lion for her multimedia installation Feeling Her Way, a celebration of the Black female musicians who had inspired her. At the 2024 biennial, Britain was represented by John Akomfrah. All three artists are pioneers of Black British art, for instance participating in the First National Black Art Convention, which was held at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1982. Their work was often overlooked or marginalised by the predominantly white mainstream art establishment, an experience which Himid says will influence her approach to the pavilion. 'We absolutely thought of ourselves as artists, but we were often in places that weren't dedicated to the showing of art,' Himid said, citing multidisciplinary arts spaces like the Africa Centre and ICA in London. 'You might come in for a cup of tea, or be queueing for cinema tickets, and you'd look at our work on the wall. We realised that those were the kinds of environments in which we could speak to the people we wanted to speak to, because they were welcoming.' Himid is confident she can rise to the task of representing Britain. 'Why not?' she told the Guardian. 'I'm British. I've lived here since I was four months old.' She was born in Zanzibar and is now based in Preston, where she teaches at the University of Central Lancashire. The artist believes that people whose national identity is called into question due to their race often have a sharp antennae for the public mood. 'I don't live here complacently. I for ever have my eye out for what's happening. What's the political situation? How are people feeling? What's missing from museum collections? Sometimes, those of us who feel we don't belong have several kinds of narratives running at the same time. I have all sorts of things to say about Britain's history and the pavilion itself.' Some of Himid's work, such as her 2007 sculpture Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service, and her paintings Le Rodeur, have drawn attention to the UK's involvement in the slave trade. In recent years, there has been a rightwing pushback to the 'woke' uncovering of such narratives, both by artists and bodies such as the National Trust, that has intensified since the election of Donald Trump. 'The right are always trying to unravel things,' Himid said. 'But the point of artists is to open stuff up, let the cat out of the bag, spill the milk. It either opens up good conversations, or everyone just has to deal with it. The 1970s, when I was at art school, were tough times. So were the 1980s. But I kept making the work I wanted to make – there's nothing else I can do.' The choice of artist to represent their country can be a vexed one. Khaled Sabsabi was due to represent Australia at Venice next year, but was sacked after the shadow arts minister complained about a 2007 video work that had included images of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. 'Artists have to say what we want to say, and sometimes people don't want us to say it,' Himid said. 'No one's ever told me to tone down my work. They let me show it and then they take the piss.' This year, Himid will revisit a 1985 show of art by Black women which she was forced to stage in a corridor at the ICA which ran from the bar to the toilet – a far cry from the expansive halls of the British pavilion. Himid will spend the rest of the year making work for Venice before the biennale opens next April. What kind of work does she plan to make? 'I always paint, so there will be paint,' the artist revealed, hinting: 'I'm interested in how surrealism meets the everyday, the space between a question and an answer. I've got a lot of work to do. It's nerve-racking, but exciting. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think I had something interesting to say.'
