Himid was born 1954 in Zanzibar and lives today in Preston, UK. Her paintings, sculptures and installations are an invitation to consider marginalised figures, communities and diasporic cultures, to expand the histories that frame our worldview, and ultimately to effect change. From the 1980s, Lubaina has been both artist and organiser, a prolific collaborator, and a crucial voice in establishing a platform for Black artists and women artists in the UK and beyond.
Lubaina Himid, A Fashionable Marriage, 1986. Installation view, So Many Dreams, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, 2022
Photo: MCBA, Jonas Hängg
Engaging directly with historic and contemporary injustice and structural racism, while relating personal and intimate experiences and feelings, and reinterpreting and reimagining Western art history, her work is rigorously critical and yet poetic, sensuous, humorous and often joyous.
She talks about the early impact of Stanley Spencer and Bridget Riley, the inexhaustible influence of William Hogarth, her curatorial work of the mid-1980s and her admiration for her peer in the Black British Arts movement Claudette Johnson.
Lubaina Himid, Predicting Positions, 2023
© Lubaina Himid. Courtesy the artist, Hollybush Gardens, London and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Andy Keate
She also reflects on the influence of writers including Audre Lorde and Essex Hemphill. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
- Lubaina Himid with Magda Stawarska: Another Chance Encounter, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 12 July-2 November
- Connecting Thin Black Lines, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 24 June-7 September.
- Lubaina Himid, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 9 May-22 November 2026
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform. Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include several museums and galleries in the UK that have had solo presentations of Lubaina Himid’s work, including Tate, the Holburne Museum in Bath, the Chisenhale Gallery in London and Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, where Lubaina has a show with Magda Stawarska in the summer of 2025. The guide to Kettle’s Yard features audio content about the former home of Jim and Helen Ede where, between 1957 and 1973, they gathered a diverse collection of art, ceramics, textiles and furniture—what is now a house museum. You can also explore the ongoing show in Kettle’s Yard’s exhibition galleries, called Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis and Survival. Listen to artists including Tomashi Jackson, Candace Hill-Montgomery and Anne Tallentire talk about their works in the show.
