Just days before the Venice Biennale opening, Lubaina Himid is calm at her home in Preston. The artist, who will represent Britain at the 'Olympics of art', has already installed her work, following the British Council's schedule to the letter. 'I'm very obedient,' she says, joking about her friend John Akomfrah.
Himid, 71, has faced a long struggle for recognition. In the 1980s, she showed work in a corridor by the ICA's toilet. Now she joins Akomfrah and Sonia Boyce as the third black British artist from their generation to take the pavilion. She won the Turner Prize in 2017 after a rule change, saying: 'I won it for all the times where we put our heads above the parapet.'
Her work often gives silent black figures agency, using paintings, cupboard doors, crockery and textiles. She was once called a 'cultural terrorist' but insists her work is like 'perfume' – subtle and seductive. At the Royal College of Art, she fought tutors who said there was 'no such thing as a black artist'.
Himid moved to the UK as a baby from Zanzibar. She says: 'I know about this place. I've seen a lot of things happen... I could smell Brexit coming.' Despite her establishment role, she keeps a 'little black book' of curators who previously shunned her. She recently married her wife Magda Stawarska, squeezing in the wedding before the Biennale madness.
