Lubaina Himid lives and works in Preston, UK, and is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. She is the winner of the 2017 Turner Prize and the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth | Flag Art Foundation Prize.
2023 Biennial Year Find out more
Himid has exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad. A major monographic exhibition of Himid’s work opened at Tate Modern, London, 2021 and travelled to Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne in 2022. Significant solo exhibitions include Water Has a Perfect Memory, Hollybush Gardens, London (2022); Spotlights, Tate Britain, London (2019); The Grab Test, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2019); Lubaina Himid, CAPC Bordeaux, France (2019); Work From Underneath, New Museum, New York (2019); Gifts to Kings, MRAC Languedoc Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées, Sérignan (2018); Our Kisses are Petals, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2018); The Truth Is Never Watertight, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2017); Navigation Charts, Spike Island, Bristol (2017); and Invisible Strategies, Modern Art Oxford (2017).
Selected group exhibitions include Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023); Rewinding Internationalism, Scenes from the ‘90s, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; When We See Us, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa; Globalisto, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole, Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, France (all 2022); Happy Mechanics, Hollybush Gardens, London, UK; Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s-Now, Tate Britain, London, UK; Lubaina Himid – Lost Threads, The British Textile Biennial, The Great Barn, Gawthorpe Hall, Padiham, Burmley, UK; Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London; Relations: Diaspora and Painting, Esker Foundation, Calgary, Canada; Invisible Narratives 2, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London; Unsettled Objects, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (all 2021); Frieze Sculpture, London; Risquons-Tout, WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Slow Painting, Hayward Touring UK travelling exhibition (all 2020); En Plein Air, The High Line, New York (2019–2020); Sharjah Biennial 14, UAE (2019); Glasgow International (2018); Berlin Biennale (2018); The Place is Here, Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2017); Keywords, Tate Liverpool (2014); and Burning Down the House, Gwangju Biennale (2014). Her work is held in various museum and public collections, including Tate; British Council Collection; Arts Council Collection; UK Government Art Collection; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Museums Liverpool; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. A monograph, titled Lubaina Himid: Workshop Manual, was released in 2019 from Koenig Books.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
Between the Two my Heart is Balanced (1991) and 'Act One, No Maps' (1992)
Initially trained in theatre design, Himid is known for her innovative approaches to painting and to social engagement. She has been pivotal in the UK since the 1980s for her contributions to the British Black arts movement, making space for the expression and recognition of Black experience and women’s creativity. Over the last decade, she has earned international recognition for her figurative paintings, which explore overlooked and invisible aspects of history and of contemporary everyday life. Both paintings presented here belong to the artist’s ‘Revenge’ series, in which Black women are depicted as the protagonists.
‘Between the Two my Heart is Balanced’ re-imagines French, Victorian artist James Tissot’s painting ‘Portsmouth Dockyard’ (c.1877). Whilst Tissot’s work features a white British soldier seated
Initially trained in theatre design, Himid is known for her innovative approaches to painting and to social engagement. She has been pivotal in the UK since the 1980s for her contributions to the British Black arts movement, making space for the expression and recognition of Black experience and women’s creativity. Over the last decade, she has earned international recognition for her figurative paintings, which explore overlooked and invisible aspects of history and of contemporary everyday life. Both paintings presented here belong to the artist’s ‘Revenge’ series, in which Black women are depicted as the protagonists. ‘Between the Two my Heart is Balanced’ re-imagines French, Victorian artist James Tissot’s painting ‘Portsmouth Dockyard’ (c.1877). Whilst Tissot’s work features a white British soldier seated in a boat between two white women, Himid’s version replaces the soldier with a stack of coloured maps which the Black female figures are tearing up and discarding. This action represents a rejection of forms of knowledge, navigation and rules traditionally created and controlled by white men. ‘Act One, No Maps’ depicts two Black women seated at the opera, looking out at a seascape from their balcony seats. The work is inspired by Impressionist works painted by Auguste Renoir and Mary Cassatt and again references the work of James Tissot. Himid was inspired to create these works as a reclaiming of space after the realisation that she could not recall ever seeing a painting with two Black female protagonists in it before. Here, she paints women who are taking control of their own destiny, stating that the works are “a musing on what would happen if Black women got together and started to try to destroy maps and charts – to undo what has been done.” Showing at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North
Between the Two my Heart is Balanced (1991) and 'Act One, No Maps' (1992)
Showing at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North
Monday to Sunday 10.00am-5:50pm-
Lubaina Himid, ‘Act One, No Maps’ and ‘Between the Two my Heart is Balanced’. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Mark McNulty.
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Lubaina Himid, ‘Act One, No Maps’. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Lubaina Himid, ‘Between the Two my Heart is Balanced’. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
