Born in 1954 in Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), Lubaina Himid moved to Britain when she was four months old. After studying at Wimbledon College of Arts and the Royal College, she trained as a theatre designer. From the mid-1980s, she was a pioneering artist and curator, organising significant exhibitions of black female artists, and making work on the themes of racism, feminism and cultural memory. A Fashionable Marriage (1986), her response to Hogarth, and Naming the Money (2004) – an installation of 100 life-sized cutouts which reimagined the lives of enslaved and forgotten black figures in European history – are now recognised as groundbreaking. She was the first black woman to win the Turner prize, in 2017, and last week it was announced that she will represent Britain at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale. Himid is now collaborating with her partner, the artist Magda Stawarska, on exhibitions at Mudam in Luxembourg and Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge.
How do you feel about being chosen to represent Britain at the next Venice Biennale?
I’m so happy. It’s a huge honour and a huge challenge, but I’m determined to have a great time doing it. It’s such a dream venue. Venice is everybody’s favourite city, and the pavilion itself is so British, on the top of that little hill, trying to be very grand and actually quite domestic. I love making shows that work with the place they’re in.
