In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 1954
- Birthplace
- Zanzibar
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- A British artist who reimagines Black histories through painting, cut-out figures, objects and sound.
Why this life matters
A British artist who reimagines Black histories through painting, cut-out figures, objects and sound.
Timeline
Key moments
Theatre, painting and public history
Lubaina Himid was born in Zanzibar in 1954 and developed her career in Britain. Training in theatre design informed a practice attentive to staged encounters, materials and the movement of an audience. She became a significant figure in the British Black Arts Movement during the 1980s. A Fashionable Marriage, made in 1986, exemplifies her use of painted figures and historical references to address contemporary power. The work makes a room into a setting where painting can face viewers at bodily scale.
Sources for this section: [1]
Giving imagined figures names and voices
Naming the Money appeared at Newcastle’s Hatton Gallery in 2004. The complete installation comprises one hundred painted cut-out figures distributed among ten occupations. Each has a name, an imposed identity and a voiced or written story. Himid’s letters describe developing these figures and composing their lives. This matters because the work is an artistic reimagining of obscured histories, not a catalogue of one hundred independently identified historical sitters. The figures gain narrative agency through painting, text, sound and the viewer’s movement among them.
Sources for this section: [2]
A career across objects and sound
Himid continued to work with found porcelain, canvases and collaborations in sound. Blue Grid Test, made with Magda Stawarska, extended her investigation of pattern and language in 2020. The Turner Prize in 2017 and later international surveys brought wider recognition to a long-established practice. As an educator and artist, her contribution joins the making of images with attention to who gets to narrate history. Different media provide different ways to make absent or subordinate figures into complex protagonists rather than decorative additions to someone else’s story.
Sources for this section: [1]
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Lubaina Himid
- What is Lubaina Himid known for?
- A British artist who reimagines Black histories through painting, cut-out figures, objects and sound.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Shona Rapira Davies
Compare Shona Rapira Davies through the separate biography and evidence-led guide on this artist’s practice.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
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