Lubaina Himid wins SUZANNE DEAL BOOTH / FLAG ART FOUNDATION PRIZE 2024
Lubaina Himid, photo: Magda Stawarska-Beavan
The Contemporary Austin has announced artist Lubaina Himid as the winner of the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize.
Over a four decades-long career, Lubaina Himid (b. 1954, Zanzibar) has explored and expanded the possibilities of painting and storytelling to depict everyday life and uncover the silenced histories of marginalised figures. Self-described as a painter and cultural activist, Himid has been influential in making space for the expression and recognition of Black experience and women’s creativity. She played a pivotal role in the British Black arts movement in the 1980s and went on to gain international recognition for her work, including winning the Turner Prize in 2017.
Initially trained in theater design, she is known for her innovative approaches to painting and to social engagement. Her artistic practice is also rooted in her personal experiences with theater and textile design from a young age, when she would join her mother, a textile designer, on trips to clothing and fabric stores. Her paintings and installations are filled with lurid and lively colors that often reference her cultural heritage. Found objects—plates, discarded furniture, jelly molds, newspapers—also form the foundation of her artworks, giving them a temporal quality that defies the confines of a gallery wall.
Himid has exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad. A major monographic exhibition of Himid’s work opened at Tate Modern, London in 2021 and travels to Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne in 2022. Significant solo exhibitions include Water Has a Perfect Memory, Hollybush Gardens, London (2022); Spotlights, Tate Britain, London (2019); The Grab Test, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2019); Lubaina Himid, CAPC Bordeaux, France (2019); Work From Underneath, New Museum, New York (2019); Gifts to Kings, MRAC Languedoc Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées, Sérignan (2018); Our Kisses are Petals, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2018); The Truth Is Never Watertight, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2017); Navigation Charts, Spike Island, Bristol (2017); and Invisible Strategies, Modern Art Oxford (2017).
Selected group exhibitions include Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London; Lubaina Himid - Lost Threads, The British Textile Biennial, The Great Barn, Gawthorpe Hall, Padiham, Burnley, UK; Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s-Now, Tate Britain, London; Relations: Diaspora and Painting, Esker Foundation, Calgary, Canada; Invisible Narratives 2, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London; Unsettled Objects, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (all 2021); Frieze Sculpture, London; Risquons-Tout, WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Slow Painting, Hayward Touring UK traveling exhibition (all 2020); En Plein Air, The High Line, New York (2019–2020); Sharjah Biennial 14, UAE (2019); Glasgow International (2018); Berlin Biennale (2018); The Place is Here, Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2017); Keywords, Tate Liverpool (2014); and Burning Down the House, Gwangju Biennale (2014). Her work is held in various museum and public collections, including the Tate; British Council Collection; Arts Council Collection; UK Government Art Collection; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Museums Liverpool; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.
In addition to receiving a $200,000 cash award, Himid will present a solo exhibition premiering in Austin in spring 2024 at The Contemporary’s downtown venue, the Jones Center on Congress Avenue. The exhibition will then travel to The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, where it will open in fall 2024. In addition to the exhibition and monetary award, the prize includes an exhibition publication and public programming around the exhibitions at both venues.
Advisory Committee:
Lubaina Himid was selected by an independent advisory committee comprising renowned curators and art historians from the U.S. and the U.K. Led by sharon maidenberg, the Ernest and Sarah Butler Director & CEO of The Contemporary Austin, this year’s advisory committee included Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO; Pilar Tompkins Rivas, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial and Collections, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, CA; Michelle White, Senior Curator, Menil Collection, Houston, TX; and Dr. Zoé Whitley, Director, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK; along with institutional advisor Jonathan Rider, Director, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY.
Visit The Contemporary for more information on the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize.
