{"id":649532,"date":"2026-05-05T15:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/649532\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T15:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:05:08","slug":"we-put-our-heads-above-the-parapet-lubaina-himid-on-winning-her-40-year-battle-to-storm-the-venice-biennale-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/649532\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We put our heads above the parapet\u2019: Lubaina Himid on winning her 40-year battle to storm the Venice Biennale | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Venice Biennale opening is just days away but Lubaina Himid isn\u2019t in a rush. The artist, who will represent Britain at the \u201cOlympics of art\u201d, is at home in Preston, where there\u2019s an air of calm. Her wife and frequent collaborator Magda Stawarska<\/a> is making a pot of tea. Gardeners are moving paving slabs in the back yard.<\/p>\n

We wander around her beautiful Victorian terrace to the house directly behind. Himid bought it, knocked down a wall between the two properties and has almost finished turning it into a studio. It\u2019s airy, light-filled and serene. Works on canvas are dotted around; paintbrushes sit neatly in custom-made cabinetry. Everything is in its right place.<\/p>\n

double quotation markShe keeps a \u2018little black book\u2019 of the \u2018big name\u2019 curators who shunned her<\/p>\n

The reason for the Zen-like vibe could be that Himid has already installed her work ahead of what is the biggest week in her career to date. \u201cI\u2019m very obedient,\u201d she confesses. \u201cI did as I was told, unlike John Akomfrah, who does what the fuck he likes.\u201d She\u2019s joking about her friend Akomfrah<\/a>, who \u2013 along with Sonia Boyce in 2022<\/a> and now Himid \u2013 completes a trio of black British artists from the same generation who have stormed the pavilion in recent years.<\/p>\n

A sense of belonging \u2026 a view of Himid\u2019s British pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Photograph: Eva Herzog<\/p>\n

The British Council, which has run the UK\u2019s pavilion for nearly 90 years, gave her a schedule: the work was to be photographed in January, shipped in February and installed by the end of March. When Himid and her team arrived in the Giardini \u2013 the Napoleon-era garden where the national pavilions sit and the art world descends every two years \u2013 they were the only team on site.<\/p>\n

Himid was given April off. But rather than rest, she decided to squeeze in getting hitched before May and the madness of all the vernissage previews. Didn\u2019t she want to take some time off? \u201cWe had a break, so we got married,\u201d says Himid matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n

The idea of the 71-year-old being obedient doesn\u2019t necessarily fit the public persona of an artist who has said her work must \u201cdisrupt\u201d, \u201cremind\u201d and \u201ccause tension\u201d. For more than four decades, she\u2019s called out the hypocrisy of the art world. She tells me she keeps a \u201clittle black book\u201d of the \u201cbig name\u201d curators who shunned her but now embrace her.<\/p>\n

Paintings on canvas, cupboard doors, crockery and textiles have been her weapon of choice, with the subjects often reaching out across the Black Atlantic, into art history, giving silent black figures agency and potency. Her figures are often cut-outs, a mode that harks back to her training in theatre design; she\u2019s wrapped buildings in textile to connect their grandeur to less palatable colonial-era exploits.<\/p>\n

\u2018You absolutely believe, whether it\u2019s true or not, that you can change spaces\u2019 \u2026 oars in Himid\u2019s British pavilion show. Photograph: Eva Herzog<\/p>\n

She was once dubbed a \u201ccultural terrorist\u201d, although she insists her work is like \u201cperfume\u201d \u2013 subtle and seductive, with the ability to linger. Himid faced one battle after another at the Royal College of Art, where she fought her tutors who regularly said there was \u201cno such thing as a black artist\u201d. Himid told them to get stuffed and wrote her thesis on contemporary black British artists before becoming a key figure in the Black Art Movement of the 1980s<\/a>, where she met fellow travellers like Akomfrah, Boyce, Maud Sulter, Donald Rodney, Claudette Johnson<\/a>, Veronica Ryan<\/a> and Ingrid Pollard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For much of her career, Himid existed in the margins. It wasn\u2019t until the mid-2010s that \u201cmainstream\u201d galleries showed her work. In 2017, aged 63, things shifted when she won the Turner prize<\/a> after a rule change made artists aged 50 and over eligible. \u201cI won it for all the times where we put our heads above the parapet,\u201d she said. \u201cWe tried to do things, we failed, people died in the meantime.\u201d (Sulter died in 2008<\/a>, Rodney in 1998<\/a>.) Back in the 80s, she curated and exhibited in several landmark shows, including The Thin Black Line<\/a> where she took over a corridor in the ICA near the toilet. Now, the grand pavilion at Venice is hers.<\/p>\n

How does it feel to represent Britain \u2013 a country whose history she has wrestled with for so long? \u201cI know about this place,\u201d says Himid, who moved to the UK as a four-month-old baby with her mother after her father died in Zanzibar<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of things happen, a lot of governments come and go, policies come and go, people come and go. People get born, people die, cities change, and I\u2019ve learned lots from our different cities, not just London,\u201d she adds. \u201cI could smell Brexit coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Himid, the question of whether or not she should represent Britain is flawed. \u201cThe question seems completely mad,\u201d she says. \u201cYou never would ask Cathy Wilkes that. It\u2019s a racist question.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m interested in something more nuanced: was there a part of her that wanted to turn down the honour? The British pavilion is, after all, like the rest of the Venice Biennale, a place that is rooted in ideas of colonialism and the kind of destructive nationalism<\/a> her work has critiqued for more than four decades. \u201cIf you\u2019re an artist, I think, you absolutely believe, whether it\u2019s true or not, that you can change spaces,\u201d she says. \u201cSo you believe that once you put your project in there, it becomes about your project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Makers and doers \u2026 boatbuilders at her Venice Biennale pavilion. Photograph: Eva Herzog<\/p>\n

Himid\u2019s pavilion \u2013 called Predicting History: Testing Translation<\/a> \u2013 sounds a bit like David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet, a seemingly quaint story that veers off to reveal darker layers where horrors may lurk<\/a>. The interior has been transformed by 78 litres of very bright bianco ottico (optical white) paint. It\u2019s illuminated with a barrisol lighting system to create a brightness reminiscent of a British summer\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds like a cliched summer\u2019s day too,\u201d adds Himid, who reveals that Stawarska has composed a soundtrack from birdsong, insect chatter and the English folk tune Early One Morning<\/a> sung by Greek star Nana Mouskouri. \u201cThen it goes slightly odd. And it gets stranger and stranger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Himid has created half a dozen vast paintings, each one presenting different figures: boatbuilders, architects, chefs, gardeners and tailors. Throughout her career, Himid has referenced makers and doers: street-sellers, seamen and servants<\/a>. Here they all represent her central idea: the question of belonging.<\/p>\n

The tailors, she explains, are engaged in a conversation about sartorial choices, culture and conformity. \u201cShould you show your identity in the new place by wearing your own clothes, or do you wear these new clothes, even though they don\u2019t fit you,\u201d she says, before rooting her idea in the British high street. \u201cSince when have you found a dress in Primark that accommodates your big bottom? It\u2019s about that \u2013 obvious everyday ways everyone understands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Made it \u2026 the British pavilion. Photograph: Eva Herzog<\/p>\n

She also poses 26 questions that, like the soundscape, start off normal enough (\u201cWhere do you come from?\u201d, \u201cWhat reminds you of home?\u201d) and quickly become confounding and even unsettling (\u201cWhy are you still here?\u201d, \u201cCan flies settle here?). Some feel like questions black Britons have always wrestled with, from Stuart Hall<\/a> in the 1980s to CLR James<\/a> in the 1960s and Amy Ashwood Garvey<\/a> in the 1940s. \u201cI\u2019m trying to work out whether you hang on to the languages and behaviours of the old place,\u201d she says. \u201cOr whether you try to learn the languages and the behaviours of the new place and what that does to the things you\u2019ve just about remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Venice, it won\u2019t only be the politics of immigration on display. Himid is one of the 200 participants in the event who has signed a letter demanding the cancellation of the Israeli pavilion, billed as \u201ca collective refusal to allow you to platform the Israeli state as it commits genocide<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Why did she sign the letter, organised by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (Anga)? \u201cYou can\u2019t be neutral on something like that,\u201d she says. \u201cI think the issues are deeply, deeply complicated, but bombing and murdering is not deeply complicated. It simply is bombing and murdering, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Manifesting her Venice selection \u2026 Surprise Navigation, from 2023. Photograph: \u00a9 Lubaina Himid. Courtesy the artist, Hollybush Gardens, London and Greene Naftali, New York.<\/p>\n

Himid is uneasy about the fact that Anga is remaining anonymous, while artists such as her and Chile\u2019s Alfredo Jaar are not. \u201cPeople who were in the anti-apartheid movement, white people and black people, you knew who they were,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are plenty of people now who wouldn\u2019t show my work, because I signed that thing, but I don\u2019t know who Anga are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again, Himid knows it\u2019s her head that is above the parapet during an event that looks like it could be one of the most politically fraught in years. Israel\u2019s foreign ministry has condemned Anga and the push for a boycott, calling this \u201canti-Israeli political indoctrination\u201d and \u201cdirect discrimination\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the walk up from the station, Himid\u2019s studio manager told me that, just before she was announced as Britain\u2019s representative in Venice, they were working on a show that featured the painting Surprise Navigation<\/a>. In it, two black figures look out at a lagoon and a pair of gondolas (many have cropped up in her work over the years). Himid joked that she was manifesting her Venice selection.<\/p>\n

A week later, the British Council unveiled her as its 2026 representative. \u201cI was ready to do it when I was 30,\u201d she said in response to the selection. \u201cIt\u2019s just that the British Council weren\u2019t ready for me<\/a>.\u201d Now her moment is here on the biggest stage of all.<\/p>\n

The Venice Biennale<\/a> opens on 9 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Venice Biennale opening is just days away but Lubaina Himid isn\u2019t in a rush. The artist, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-649532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}