Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:16:37.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Foreword

Celeste-Marie Bernier
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Alan Rice
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Lubaina Himid
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Hannah Durkin
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
Get access

Summary

Past called Future. Future said ‘You again?’

Back in the spring of 1988, troubled by the glaring absence of meaningful critique for Black women's art, fellow artist Sutapa Biswas and I wrote, ‘Will the Blackwoman Art Critic Please Stand Up?’ Published in Spare Rib, the article was a call for critical discussion of our work beyond the prevailing ‘angry black voices’ narrative. Thirty years later, the scarcity of published material persists. I am therefore excited at the arrival of this volume, eagerly anticipating the publication of more critical writing and honoured to be writing the foreword to what I am sure will become a landmark reference text for current and future artists and scholars.

Inside the Invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid reminds me that the vile trade in slaves, the racism it cultivated, fashioned and exported, its effects and consequences are very much a twenty-first-century concern. Race hovers like a spectre over our world. Conversations about what it is to be human, across the widest spectrum of artistic forms, take place in its shadow. Overwhelmingly it is artists of colour who wrestle to make conversations informed by race resonate. How to make art of sufficient urgency to hasten change with intensities and complexities fit for poetic purpose?

One of the many things that I love about Lubaina Himid's work is its restlessness. Her painting can be found on unstretched canvases, cut-outs, piano parts, bedlinen and spoons, in drawers, banjo cases and soup tureens. She paints on to and into my newspaper; on grand and miniature scales; as individual, installation and multi-part series; in galleries, museums, hospitals, grand houses and lighthouses. This restlessness is embodied by hundreds of works completed over four decades and yet to be fully catalogued, let alone discussed.

Inside the Invisible is the first book-length attempt to consider her practice. Occupied as I am with abolition both from a twenty-first-century vantage point and in a twenty-first-century form, I find myself returning to various of her works repeatedly. Lately, for example, I have been baffled and mesmerised by her Le Rodeur series, discussed at length in Chapter 13.

Type
Chapter
Information
Inside the Invisible
Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid
, pp. xvii - xx
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×