Presenting over 50 works that bring together painting, everyday objects, poetic texts and sound, the exhibition offers a rare chance to experience the breadth of Himid’s influential career. Early installations including the well-known A Fashionable Marriage 1984 enter into a dialogue with recent works such as her series of large format paintings Le Rodeur 2016-18, while new paintings created during lockdown go on public display for the first time. Himid says: “I have always thought of my work as starting when people get to see it. For me nothing starts until then.”

An early fascination with pattern, influenced by her mother’s career as a textile designer, has always been central to Himid’s work. “Patterns occur when I am talking to myself and trying to make visual the music, the sound, the noise and the poetry which underpins all of my work” says the artist. A series of suspended cloth flags inspired by East African kanga textiles welcome visitors to the exhibition at Tate Modern, featuring evocative lines of poetry which address the kanga’s layered uses and meanings, as well as its associations with fashion.

Throughout her career, Himid has explored and expanded the possibilities of storytelling, encouraging the viewer to become an active participant in her work. A fictional architecture competition inspires the installation Jelly Mould Pavilions for Liverpool 2010, in which a series of hand-painted ceramic models celebrate the contributions of the African diaspora and invite viewers to reflect on the role of monuments in public space. Displayed at Tate Modern alongside a range of works including Metal Handkerchiefs 2019 in a room addressing architecture and the built environment, Himid poses the question: ‘We live in clothes, we live in buildings. Do they fit us?’

A major highlight of the exhibition is the presence of sound installations, including Blue Grid Test 2020, created by Himid in collaboration with artist Magda Stawarska-Beavan. Displayed in the UK for the first time, this 25-metre-long painting features 64 patterns from all over the world, each painted a different shade of blue on top of a variety of objects pinned to the gallery walls. Coupled with a sound installation layering instrumental music with Himid’s voice, the work creates a visual and sonic embrace. Reflecting on this idea, Himid asks visitors: ‘What does love sound like?’

The show culminates in a group of recent paintings and painted objects, which centre on extraordinary moments of everyday life which are rarely portrayed. The series Men in Drawers 2017-19 features tender portraits of imaginary figures inside vintage wooden furniture, while works like Cover the Surface 2019 depict intimate interactions and moments of indecision between men. Himid also continues to explore women’s creativity in her recent paintings, including The Operating Table 2019, which places visitors among a group of women in the throes of conversation and planning. With each painting the artist asks us to consider ‘What happens now?’

The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne/Plateforme 10. Lubaina Himid is curated by Michael Wellen, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern and Amrita Dhallu, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern. Supported by John J. Studzinksi CBE, with additional support from the Lubaina Himid Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Americas Foundation, Tate International Council and Tate Patrons

Lubaina Himid

Until July 03, 2022

Tate Modern

London, United Kingdom

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Centred on the presentation in the nave of her seminal installation Naming the Money (2004). A key work in the career of the British artist, it consists of nearly one hundred life-size painted plywood cut-outs that bring to life African servants depicted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European court paintings.

A figurehead of the Black Arts movement in 1980s Britain, Himid has been developing a multi-facetted oeuvre across four decades in which she combines art-making, curating, archiving and teaching to explore the marginalisation of the black diaspora in contemporary society.

By removing the protagonists of Naming the Money from contexts in which they were instrumentalised as signifiers of their masters’ wealth and social status, Himid gives them back a body and a name, thus restoring their agency for collective action. In the installation, these slaves, who were employed in European courts as ceramists, herbalists, toy makers or dog trainers, are heard speaking about their changing identities as they were forced to shed their African names and occupations in favour of the new roles imposed on them. 

Naming the Money, which has recently been donated by the artist to the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, extends the experience of slavery to all ‘migrants’ whose personal identities are deconstructed and reconstructed under pressure from global political and economic forces.

Occupying the centre of the nave, the installation also calls to mind the initial purpose of the warehouse that has been housing the CAPC since the 1970s. Built in 1824, nearly ten years after the official abolition of the slave trade, it was used to store colonial goods (coffee, sugar, cocoa, cotton, rum, wine, cod, spices, etc.) in transit to Northern Europe, sustaining the city’s maritime trade for more than a century.

As a counterpoint to this colourful crowd with which viewers are encouraged to mingle, Himid is showing nine diptych paintings with abstract geometric patterns. Inspired by real or inner journeys to her native island, the series of paintings entitledZanzibar is suggestive rather than illustrative, its deafening silence forming a stark contrast to Naming the Money.

• Lubaina Himid : Naming the Money
• Curator: Alice Motard
• 31.10.2019 – 23.02.2020
• CAPC museum of contemporary art – Bordeaux (France)

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Artist Lubaina Himid discusses work from her exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford, Nottingham Contemporary and Spike Island, Bristol.

Born in Zanzibar in 1954 and brought up in Britain, Lubaina Himid was a pioneer of the Black Arts Movement. Her work examines the experience of people of the diaspora and their contribution to history and culture. Trained as a theatre designer, Himid went on to curate several important exhibitions focused on the work of Black British artists, alongside her own work as an artist.

This film was commissioned as part of a national tour of Lubaina Himid’s work funded by Arts Council England’s Strategic Touring fund.

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