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The Venice Biennale opening is a few days away but Lubaina Himid is not in a hurry. The artist, who will represent Britain at the “Olympics of Art”, is at home in Preston, where it is quiet. His wife is a frequent contributor Magda Stawarska he is making a pot of tea. Gardeners are moving slabs in the backyard.
We wander around its beautiful Victorian courtyard to the house in the back. Himid bought it, knocked down the wall between the two units and is almost done converting it into a studio. It is breezy, full of light and calm. The works on the canvas are dotted around; Paint brushes look great in custom cabinetry. Everything is in its proper place.
Thanks to the Zen-like vibe perhaps Himid has already put his work ahead of the biggest week of his career so far. “I’m very sensitive,” she confesses. “I did what I was told, unlike John Akomfrah, who does what he likes.” He is making jokes about his friend Akomfrahwho – together with Sonia Boyce in 2022 and now Himid – completes a trio of black British artists from the same generation who have graced the pavilion in recent years.
The British Council, which has been running the UK for almost 90 years, gave him a schedule: the work should be filmed in January, sent in February and installed at the end of March. When Himid and his team arrived at the Giardini – a Napoleonic-era garden where national pavilions are housed and artworks come down every two years – they were the only group on site.
Himid was given the job in April. But instead of relaxing, he decided to stick it out before May and the madness of all the vernissages. Didn’t want to take a break? “We had time to relax, so we got married,” says Himid confidently.
The 71-year-old’s opinion of obedience does not agree with ordinary people who has said that his work should “confuse”, “remind” and “cause controversy”. For more than four decades, he has been calling out the hypocrisy of the art world. She tells me she keeps a “little black book” of “big name” patrons who shun her but now embrace her.
Paintings on canvas, cabinet doors, plates and textiles have become his chosen medium, and studies that often reach the Black Atlantic, in the history of art, conveying the silence of black groups and potency. His numbers are often expensive, a style that harkens back to his theater training; he has built buildings and textiles to connect their beauty to the unpleasant elements of the colonial era.
He was once called a “culture criminal”, although he insists that his work is like “perfume” – subtle and seductive, which can linger. Himid faced one battle after another at the Royal College of Art, where he fought with his teachers who always said “there is no such thing as a black artist”. Himid told them to get caught up in his writing about black British artists before he became a mainstream figure The Black Art Movement of the 1980swhere he met fellow travelers such as Akomfrah, Boyce, Maud Sulter, Donald Rodney, Claudette Johnson, Veronica Ryan and Ingrid Pollard.
For most of his career, Himid existed on the fringes. It wasn’t until the mid-2010s that “mainstream” galleries showed his work. In 2017, 63 years old, things changed when won the Turner prize after a law change made artists 50 and over eligible. “I won every time we put our heads over the fence,” he said. “We tried to do things, we failed, people died at this point.” (Sulter He died in 2008Rodney in 1998.) Back in the 80s, he managed and presented several interesting shows, including The Thin Black Line where he took the corridor to the ICA near the toilet. Now, the mansion in Venice is his.
How does it feel to represent Britain – a country whose history you have fought for so long? “I know about this place,” says Himid, who moved to the UK as a four-month-old baby after her mother passed away. his father died in Zanzibar. “I have seen many things happening, many governments come and go, policies come and go, people come and go.” People are born, people die, cities change, and I’ve learned a lot from our different cities, not just London. “I smelled Brexit coming.”
For Himid, the question of whether or not to represent Britain is a false one. He said: “That question seems so crazy. “You can’t ask Cathy Wilkes that. It’s a racist question.”
But I’m interested in more: was there a part that wanted to refuse the honor? The British Pavilion is, like the rest of the Venice Biennale, a permanent venue colonialism is a kind of destructive world His work has been criticized for more than forty years. “If you’re an artist, I think, you believe that, whether it’s true or not, you can change the landscape,” he says. “So you believe that once you put your project out there, it becomes about your project.”
House of Himid – called Predictive History: An Attempt at Interpretation – sounds like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, a seemingly strange story that stops short of revealing darker layers. where danger can lurk. The interior has been updated with 78 liters of light white light (Optical white) color. It is illuminated by barrisol lighting systems to create a light similar to a British summer’s day.
“It also sounds like a winter’s summer day,” adds Himid, who reveals that Stawarska composed birdsong, insect chatter and English music. One Morning in the Morning sung by Greek star Nana Mouskouri. “Then it becomes strange.
Himid created twelve large paintings, each depicting different figures: boat builders, builders, cooks, gardeners and tailors. Throughout his career, Himid has named producers and actors: street vendors, sailors and workers. Here they all represent his main idea: the question of belonging.
The costumers, he explains, are discussing the choices of magic, culture and connection. “You have to show who you are in new places by wearing your own clothes, or wearing these new clothes, even if they don’t fit you,” he says, before setting his sights on the British high street. “Since when did you find a dress in Primark that fits under you? It’s like that – the obvious ways that everyone understands.”
They also ask 26 questions which, as it sounds, start off well (“Where are you from?”, “What reminds you of home?”) and quickly become confusing and unsettling (“Why are you still here?”, “Can flies settle here?”). Some feel like dark questions Britons have always struggled with, from Stuart Hall in the 1980s that CLR James in the 1960s and Amy Ashwood Garvey in the 1940s. He said: “I try to see if you follow the languages and customs of the past. “Or if you try to learn the languages and customs of a new place and what they do to the things you have. just about to remember.”
In Venice, it will not be immigration politics that is on display. Himid is one of the 200 participants of the event who have signed a letter calling for the removal of the Israeli building, which was called “refusing to allow you to create the state of Israel while it is committing genocide“.
Why did he sign the letter, prepared by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (Anga)? “You can’t be neutral about things like that,” he said. It’s bombing and killing, you know?”
Himid is not comfortable saying that Anga is unknown, while artists like him and Alfredo Jaar from Chile are not. “The people who were in the anti-apartheid group, the whites and the blacks, you know who they were,” he says. “There are a lot of people now who won’t show my work, because I signed the thing, but I don’t know who Mine is.”
Once again, Himid knows his head is above the fence in what looks like it could be one of the most controversial political events in years. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has criticized Anga and called for it to be ignored, calling it “political criticism of Israel” and “direct discrimination”.
As I was walking from the station, the manager of Himid’s studio told me that, before he was announced as the British representative in Venice, he was working on an exhibition of the picture. Surprise Navigation. In it, two black people look out over the lake and the gondolas (many of which have been in operation for years). Himid joked that he was showing his choice in Venice.
A week later, the British Council revealed him as a candidate for 2026. “I was ready to do this when I was 30 years old,” he said in response to the nomination. “It’s just that the British Council was not ready for me.” Now his moment is here on the biggest stage of all.
