–
Featuring new and significant works, this exhibition is the first full scale European survey presenting the collaborative artistic practice of Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska. Conceived as a performance, the exhibition emerges from a decade-long dialogue between British painter Lubaina Himid (1954, Zanzibar), a leading figure of the British Black Arts Movement, and multi- disciplinary Polish artist Magda Stawarska (1976, Ruda Śląska, Poland), whose practice combines moving image, soundscapes and screen printing. In their exhibition Nets for Night and Day, memory unfolds as a score narrated through paintings and drawings, as well as sculpture, silkscreen printing, photography and sound installation. Visitors will find themselves on a journey aboard ships, venturing across carts, ambling into dreamscapes rendered by the artists’ and their collective imagination. At the heart of the exhibition is a newly imagined presentation of Zanzibar (1999–2023). The ninediptychs by Himid composing this ‘series of paintings about a series of journeys’ float suspended rhythmically in space and enter in dialogue with a 38-minute sound piece conceived by Stawarska as a ‘libretto’ for the paintings. Each of them, an abstraction at first, present codified clues into Himid’s life. Associated with sound fragments that evoke her personal history, Zanzibar reflects on the multifaceted notions of belonging, loss and memory.
Biographies
Lubaina Himid (1954, Zanzibar) has recently had solo exhibitions at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2022); Tate Modern, London (2021); the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2019); the CAPC – musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (2019); the New Museum, New York (2019) and Modern Art Oxford (2017). She has taken part in group exhibitions at the Beaux-Arts, Paris (2024); the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2024); Tate Britain, London (2023); the Sharjah Art Foundation (2021); WIELS, Brussels (2020) and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2019).Her work is held in the collections of institutions such as the Tate, London; Arts Council England; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. Lubaina Himid lives and works in Preston (UK).
Magda Stawarska (1976, Ruda Śląska, Poland) has had solo exhibitions at Villa Arson, Nice (2023); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2022); as part of the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium (2017) and at the China Printmaking Museum, Shenzhen (2017). She has taken part in group exhibitions at the Leeds Museum and Art Gallery (2024); Villa Arson, Nice (2023); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2022); the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2022); WIELS, Brussels (2020) and the 4th International Biennial in Casablanca (2018). Her work is held in the collections of institutions such as the British Library, London; the China Printmaking Museum, Shenzhen; the International Print Triennial Society, Krakow; the Tonspur Kunstverein, Vienna; the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana and the International Printmaking Biennial of Douro, Alijó. Magda Stawarska lives and works in Preston (UK).
Lubaina Himid and Madga Stawarska co-presented the exhibition Plaited Time/Deep Water at the Sharjah Art Foundation (2023). Their installation Blue Grid Test was presented at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2022) and at Tate Modern, London (2021). In 2020 they took part in an exhibition titled Risquons-Tout at the WIELS, Brussels.