With the Venice Biennale opening just days away, Lubaina Himid remains remarkably calm. The artist, who will represent Britain at the 'Olympics of art', is at home in Preston, enjoying a serene atmosphere. Her wife and collaborator Magda Stawarska makes tea while gardeners work in the yard.
Wandering through her Victorian terrace, Himid shows off the adjacent house she bought, knocked through, and transformed into a light-filled studio. Works on canvas dot the space, paintbrushes rest in custom cabinets, and everything is in order.
This Zen-like state may stem from Himid having already installed her work ahead of the biggest week of her career. 'I'm very obedient,' she confesses. 'I did as I was told, unlike John Akomfrah, who does what the fuck he likes.' She jokes about Akomfrah, who, along with Sonia Boyce in 2022 and now Himid, completes a trio of black British artists from the same generation to storm the pavilion.
The British Council, which has run the UK's pavilion for nearly 90 years, provided a strict schedule: photograph work in January, ship in February, install by end of March. Himid and her team arrived at the Giardini—the Napoleon-era garden housing national pavilions—as the only team on site.
Given April off, Himid chose not to rest but to get married before the May vernissage madness. 'We had a break, so we got married,' she says matter-of-factly.
The idea of the 71-year-old being obedient doesn't align with her public persona as an artist whose work must 'disrupt', 'remind', and 'cause tension'. For over four decades, she has called out the art world's hypocrisy, keeping a 'little black book' of curators who once shunned her but now embrace her.
Her weapons of choice—paintings on canvas, cupboard doors, crockery, and textiles—often reach across the Black Atlantic into art history, giving silent black figures agency. Her figures are frequently cut-outs, a mode harking back to her theatre design training. She has wrapped buildings in textile to connect their grandeur to colonial-era exploits.
Once dubbed a 'cultural terrorist', Himid insists her work is like 'perfume'—subtle yet lingering. She faced battles at the Royal College of Art, where tutors claimed 'no such thing as a black artist'. Himid told them to get stuffed, wrote her thesis on contemporary black British artists, and became a key figure in the 1980s Black Art Movement alongside Akomfrah, Boyce, Maud Sulter, Donald Rodney, Claudette Johnson, Veronica Ryan, and Ingrid Pollard.
For much of her career, Himid existed in the margins. It wasn't until the mid-2010s that mainstream galleries showed her work. In 2017, aged 63, she won the Turner Prize after a rule change made artists over 50 eligible. 'I won it for all the times where we put our heads above the parapet,' she said. 'We tried to do things, we failed, people died in the meantime.' (Sulter died in 2008, Rodney in 1998.) In the 80s, she curated landmark shows, including The Thin Black Line in an ICA corridor near the toilet. Now, the grand pavilion at Venice is hers.
Representing Britain: A Complex Honor
How does it feel to represent a country whose history she has wrestled with for so long? 'I know about this place,' says Himid, who moved to the UK as a four-month-old baby after her father died in Zanzibar. 'I've seen a lot of things happen, a lot of governments come and go, policies come and go, people come and go. People get born, people die, cities change, and I've learned lots from our different cities, not just London. I could smell Brexit coming.'
For Himid, the question of whether she should represent Britain is flawed. 'The question seems completely mad. You never would ask Cathy Wilkes that. It's a racist question.'
But was there a part of her that wanted to turn down the honor? The British pavilion, like the rest of the Biennale, is rooted in colonialism and nationalism her work has critiqued for decades. 'If you're an artist, I think, you absolutely believe, whether it's true or not, that you can change spaces. So you believe that once you put your project in there, it becomes about your project.'
The Pavilion: Predicting History: Testing Translation
Himid's pavilion, titled 'Predicting History: Testing Translation', evokes David Lynch's Blue Velvet—a seemingly quaint story that reveals darker layers. The interior is transformed by 78 litres of bright optical white paint and illuminated with a barrisol lighting system to mimic a British summer's day. 'It sounds like a cliched summer's day too,' adds Himid. Stawarska composed a soundtrack from birdsong, insect chatter, and the English folk tune 'Early One Morning' sung by Nana Mouskouri. 'Then it goes slightly odd. And it gets stranger and stranger.'
Himid created half a dozen vast paintings featuring figures: boatbuilders, architects, chefs, gardeners, and tailors. Throughout her career, she has referenced makers and doers—street-sellers, seamen, servants. Here, they represent her central idea: belonging.
The tailors, she explains, engage in a conversation about sartorial choices, culture, and conformity. 'Should you show your identity in the new place by wearing your own clothes, or do you wear these new clothes, even though they don't fit you? Since when have you found a dress in Primark that accommodates your big bottom? It's about that—obvious everyday ways everyone understands.'
She also poses 26 questions that start normal ('Where do you come from?', 'What reminds you of home?') and become unsettling ('Why are you still here?', 'Can flies settle here?'). Some echo questions black Britons have wrestled with from Stuart Hall in the 1980s to CLR James in the 1960s and Amy Ashwood Garvey in the 1940s. 'I'm trying to work out whether you hang on to the languages and behaviours of the old place, or whether you try to learn the languages and the behaviours of the new place and what that does to the things you've just about remembered.'
Political Stance: Signing the Letter
At Venice, the politics of immigration won't be the only issue. Himid is one of 200 participants who signed a letter demanding the cancellation of the Israeli pavilion, described as 'a collective refusal to allow you to platform the Israeli state as it commits genocide'.
Why did she sign? 'You can't be neutral on something like that. I think the issues are deeply, deeply complicated, but bombing and murdering is not deeply complicated. It simply is bombing and murdering, you know?'
Himid is uneasy that the organizing group, Art Not Genocide Alliance (Anga), remains anonymous while signatories like her and Chile's Alfredo Jaar are public. 'People who were in the anti-apartheid movement, white people and black people, you knew who they were. There are plenty of people now who wouldn't show my work, because I signed that thing, but I don't know who Anga are.'
Once again, Himid's head is above the parapet at a potentially fraught event. Israel's foreign ministry has condemned Anga and the boycott push as 'anti-Israeli political indoctrination' and 'direct discrimination'.
Manifesting Venice
On the walk from the station, Himid's studio manager recalled that before she was announced as Britain's representative, they worked on a show featuring the painting 'Surprise Navigation'. It depicted two black figures looking at a lagoon and gondolas—a recurring motif. Himid joked she was manifesting her Venice selection.
A week later, the British Council unveiled her as the 2026 representative. 'I was ready to do it when I was 30. It's just that the British Council weren't ready for me.' Now her moment has arrived on the biggest stage. The Venice Biennale opens on 9 May.
