Latest news with #LubainaHimid
Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists: A victim of its own noble ambition
Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists at the progressive Pallant House Gallery aims to celebrate the relationships between artists and the artistic representation of these relationships. A simple enough concept, one would have thought. I was excited for my visit down to Chichester, enticed by the promise of many and various works – there are more than 130 works on show, including paintings by British establishment icons such as Lucian Freud, Cedric Morris, David Hockney, Paula Rego and Celia Paul. The exhibition opens with flair. Viewers are greeted by a selection of colourful figures from Lubaina Himid's 1994 installation Vernet's Studio, set against a bright lemon-yellow wall. These life-size, painted wooden cut-outs of formidable female artists from times gone by were initially exhibited as part of a 26-piece show where viewers were invited to walk among the carnival of characters and see how many they could name. Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo, sternly gazing out beneath her bushy brow, is the most instantly recognisable of the menagerie. English op art painter Bridget Riley is more subtly represented by a contoured abstract form emblazoned with her characteristic stripes. Each of the figures in this delightful yet dysfunctional ensemble are based, in terms of pose and composition, on figures from Horace Vernet's painting The Studio (1820-1), and so Seeing Each Other opens with a neat double entendre. British artist Lubaina Himid has not only created entertaining and interrogative portraits of female artists, but she has also modelled these cut-outs on a 19th-century artist's depiction of his own studio. But dexterity and wit quickly dissipate as you enter the first room of the exhibition entitled: Artistic Bohemia, where the likes of Roger Fry, Nina Hamnett and Augustus John are both maker and muse in various works depicting the circles of London's art schools in the early 20th century. The most telling portrayal is a painting by John Currie, depicting himself and his fellow Slade students, alongside the proprietor of their favourite Soho hangout, the Petit Savoyard. Currie's Some Later Primitives and Madame Tisceron (1912) shows his cohort through the highly stylised lens of an early Renaissance fresco: one can imagine the chirrupings of mutual sycophancy that went on into the small hours at that café. But poor old Currie was no Piero della Francesca. It was in the room entitled 'Intimate Relationships' that my ability to digest the connections between the artists, sitters and styles began to flounder. Curatorship is not only about telling a story, but also about making sure that the works being used to tell that story are aesthetically cohesive and visually harmonious. Just because two people loved each other, and created art works of each other, it doesn't mean that those two works should hang next to each other on an exhibition wall. And when there are over five or six such groupings in a room, the mixture of works on show begins to feel akin to the chaos of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. I looked around at the cacophonous hodgepodge of works on the walls and felt as though I had been abandoned at a party full of strangers, only I didn't have a drink, and everyone at the party was inanimate. The concept of this Pallant House exhibition reads very well on paper: a chance to be immersed in the great relationships between some of the brightest (and lesser known) stars of the British art establishment of the past century. However, the multitudinous diversity of works on display leaves the viewer dizzy – fewer, more impactful displays might have been better. For example, an intimate nook late in the exhibition, dedicated to the School of London, juxtaposes portraits of Lucian Freud asleep by Celia Paul, and Paul by Freud – it is one of the most vulnerable juxtapositions in the show. In these moments, the brilliance of the exhibition's curatorial vision is fully apparent. But Seeing Each Other is a victim of its own ambitious intentions. All in all, the show is, at best, good in parts.
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.
The Guardian
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Artist Lubaina Himid: ‘The YBAs were wired into selling art. We had no idea that was how to do it'
Born in 1954 in Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), Lubaina Himid moved to Britain when she was four months old. After studying at Wimbledon College of Arts and the Royal College, she trained as a theatre designer. From the mid-1980s, she was a pioneering artist and curator, organising significant exhibitions of black female artists, and making work on the themes of racism, feminism and cultural memory. A Fashionable Marriage (1986), her response to Hogarth, and Naming the Money (2004) – an installation of 100 life-sized cutouts which reimagined the lives of enslaved and forgotten black figures in European history – are now recognised as groundbreaking. She was the first black woman to win the Turner prize, in 2017, and last week it was announced that she will represent Britain at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale. Himid is now collaborating with her partner, the artist Magda Stawarska, on exhibitions at Mudam in Luxembourg and Kettle's Yard in Cambridge. How do you feel about being chosen to represent Britain at the next Venice Biennale?I'm so happy. It's a huge honour and a huge challenge, but I'm determined to have a great time doing it. It's such a dream venue. Venice is everybody's favourite city, and the pavilion itself is so British, on the top of that little hill, trying to be very grand and actually quite domestic. I love making shows that work with the place they're in. Your work was only really feted after you won the Turner prize. Did you mind being ignored for so long?All those years, really amazing art historians were writing about the work, and tiny galleries and big galleries with minute reputations were showing it. They were not the most famous curators in the most famous venues but they were people who totally believed in me. I was teaching [at the University of Central Lancashire] and I used to get a phenomenal amount of energy from talking to student artists. That's what kept me going. I knew time was passing but I was making art every single day and showing quite often, it was just that no one was talking about it. Those big curators knew all about the work, but they didn't want to take the risk. Why not?In the 80s and 90s, black women artists were not part of the mainstream debate. The YBAs were incredibly strong and making very dynamic work that spoke to the moment. I think people thought our moment had passed, but we kept going and we kept talking to each other. We kept hanging on to the things that were important. Were you ever bitter about being ignored?I felt that we missed a trick. We set out to show our work to as many people as we could. But we were not thinking about selling it. It didn't occur to us. We didn't understand the system of commercial art at all, whereas the YBAs were wired into selling art as well as making really brave stuff. I was cross because we had no idea that was the way to do it. I felt I had been stupid. Your show, The Thin Black Line (1985), which showed the work of now renowned black female artists including Sonia Boyce and Claudette Johnson, was actually hung in a corridor.I wanted to take over the whole of the ICA and they said no. Instead, they offered me a space that went from the foyer to the bar. It wasn't quite what I had in mind, but I knew these artists were just so good, and I thought thousands of people would see it as they went to the loo or the bar or the performance space. This year, 40 years on, we're returning – and I am doing what I wanted to do in the first place. Filling the whole building with their work. Did you ever think of being anything other than an artist?I was heading towards journalism because I was interested in why people do things. But I always had a desire to be part of change, and I got pulled towards being a political theatre designer, making artworks for public places that would interact with people's everyday processes. I thought I could change the world through putting on political theatre. What's it like exhibiting with your partner, Magda Stawarska?Most of the time it's hilarious. We have a really good time. It makes me very relaxed because I can really talk through an idea. Being an artist is a bit lonely, you have to make your own decisions every minute. But with this collaborative work, it's all about our conversations about language, about interpretation, about codes, about pattern. We just love telling each other anecdotes or showing each other films or playing each other music that the other person doesn't know and sort of riffing off that. How do you cope with living and working together?My mother was a textile designer, so from being a child I've lived in the same place as another artist. It feels very natural to me to be talking about work while doing quite domestic things like shopping or cleaning. They merge and blend. You've lived in Preston since 1991. Why do you love it?It's a small city, but it works for us. The marvellous thing is that it's got one of everything and it has great transport. You can get to the coast, to the Lake District, to London, to the big cities in the north. It really is very central in that way. And it's very green, with fantastic parks and fabulous buildings. It's full of odd but rather wonderful architecture and strangely tolerant people as well. It's a region that's open to having a conversation about something simple or something complicated. Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska: Nets for Night and Day is at Mudam, Luxembourg, from 7 March to 24 August; Lubaina Himid with Magda Stawarska is at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, from 12 July to 2 November Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985-2025 is at the ICA, London SW1, from 24 June to 7 September
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.'
