LAUSANNE.- A major exhibition of the luminous and powerful work of Lubaina Himid offers an overview of the British artist’s output for the first time.
An influential figure in contemporary art, from the central role she played in the British Black Art movement in the 1980s to her receipt of the Turner Prize in 2017, LUBAINA HIMID (b. 1954, Zanzibar) has constantly explored the possibilities that painting offers while questioning the narratives it conveys. In doing so, she has drawn attention both to aspects of history that have been made invisible and to the extraordinary moments of daily life.
Comprising brightly colored paintings, monumental installations, and sound environments, Lubaina Himid: So Many Dreams offers a unique opportunity to discover the scope and depth of the artist’s work. The exhibition unfolds along several narratives that touch on the question of places and their histories, memory and its resurgence in the present, and the transmission of certain stories through color, patterns, and sound. Key series of paintings, including Revenge (1991-1992), Plan B (1999), and Le Rodeur (2016-2018) have been brought together here for the first time, generating a dialogue between works from every period of the artist’s output, from her celebrated installation A Fashionable Marriage (1984) to more recent sound installations like Old Boat/New Money (2019) and Blue Grid Test (2020). “What are monuments for?” “What does love sound like?” “How do you distinguish safety from danger?” Through her luminous and powerful body of work and the questions it raises, Lubaina Himid offers us views of history revisited through the prism of the imagination.
The exhibition is organized by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with the MCBA. Curated by Michael Wellen, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern; Curated at MCBA by Nicole Schweizer, Curator of Contemporary Art.
Lubaina Himid lives and works in Preston, England, and is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Lancashire. A solo exhibition of her work—titled Lubaina Himid: So Many Dreams—will open at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne on November 4, 2022, and her work will be included in the next Sharjah Biennial, opening in February 2023. Hollybush Gardens, London, has mounted four solo exhibitions of Himid's work, beginning in 2013. Recent institutional shows include Tate Modern, London (2021); Tate Britain, London (2019); Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2019); CAPC Bordeaux, France (2019); New Museum, New York (2019); Spike Island, Bristol, UK (2017); and Modern Art Oxford (2017). Her work is in the collections of Museum Ludwig, Cologne; National Museums, Liverpool; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Tate, London; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.
