Lubaina Himid

Lubaina Himid CBE RA, b. 1954, Zanzibar.

Lubaina Himid is a British artist and curator who has dedicated her thirty-year career to uncovering marginalised and silenced histories, figures, and cultural moments. She first studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon College of Art, drawn to the discipline for its connections to radical politics, particularly Black politics. She later received an MA in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art.

Himid creates paintings, drawings, prints, and installations, often working on a variety of surfaces, including ceramic and wood. Her pieces frequently possess performative potential, intended to be encountered within a space. Her work addresses her heritage and is driven by two recurrent aspirations: to develop and sustain a conversation with her audience and to valorise, as she states, ‘the contribution Black people have made to cultural life in Europe for the past several hundred years’.

Deeply engaged with the lack of representation of Black and Asian women in the art world, Himid is committed to showcasing the work of underrepresented contemporaries. She has curated significant group exhibitions, including The Thin Black Line at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1985), which was revisited in the exhibition Thin Black Line(s) at Tate Britain (2011-12).

Himid lives and works in Preston, UK, and is a professor at the University of Central Lancashire. She was awarded the Turner Prize in 2017 and made a CBE for services to art in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Exhibitions include: A major exhibition at Tate Modern, London; Cristea Roberts Gallery, London; Hollybush Gardens, London; Tate Britain, London; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands; CAPC Bordeaux, France; New Museum, New York; MRAC Languedoc Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées, Sérignan; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; Spike Island, Bristol; Modern Art Oxford.

Awards include: Turner Prize (2017); CBE (2018).




Work for BTB

2021

Cascading through the structure of Gawthorpe Hall’s Great Barn, 400 metres of Dutch Wax fabric reflect the movement of oceans and rivers that have been used to transport cotton across the planet and over centuries. Waterways historically carried raw cotton, spun yarn, and woven textiles from continent to continent, as well as enslaved people from Africa to pick raw cotton in the southern states of America or workers who migrated from South Asia to operate looms here in East Lancashire.

In this major installation, Turner-prize winning artist, Lubaina Himid, continued her life-long exploration into the making of clothing and histories of colonisation, female labour, migration and globalisation. Although recognised as ‘African’ cloth, these textiles have a complex lineage and identity that reflects an historic and continuing flow of labour, trade and money.

The vibrantly coloured and intricately patterned fabric in the installation dominates West African markets and is now globally recognised as quintessentially “African” although the cloth was originally forged by Dutch colonial companies attempting to mechanically reproduce handmade Javanese batik cloth in Holland. When this failed to take off in Southeast Asia, Dutch traders began to sell the cloth in West African markets. The patterns were modified to fit local tastes and quickly became popular, ultimately becoming an essential everyday consumer good. However, today the majority of Dutch designs available on African markets are low-cost reproductions made in China, such as the fabric used in Lost Threads which exposed the role of colonisation in the formation of cultural stereotypes.

Gawthorpe Hall and the Great Barn are owned by the National Trust. The Hall is managed by Lancashire County Council.

Lubaina Himid's Lost Threads installed in Gawthorpe Hall's Great Barn.

Lubaina Himid

Lost Threads

Turner Prize-winning Lubaina Himid presented a major new work held at Gawthorpe Hall in Burnley.

01/10/2021 - 31/10/2021
Gawthorpe Hall