Lubaina Himid: 鈥淔inding a place of belonging is challenging鈥�
The Turner prize-winning artist talks about finding identity as child of dual heritage in the 1960s
The artist Lubaina Himid has told HARDtalk鈥檚 Stephen Sackur 鈥淚鈥檝e functioned the whole of my life as two people.鈥�
鈥淣ot half this and half that, but as both of those things. And both those things are very similar as one is an ordinary person living an ordinary life. But it鈥檚 challenging. Finding a place of belonging is challenging.鈥�
Himid鈥檚 mother was from northern England and her father was from Zanzibar and they lived together on the island which is just off the coast of Tanzania. He died when she was only a few months old and she grew up in London after her mother decided to return to the UK.
鈥淚 think growing up there were challenges but when I was growing up it was the early 1960s so England was a very different place, even London was a very, very different place.鈥�
Asked whether she had a sense of black consciousness growing up, she said 鈥淚 went to arts school in London and the minute I was in art school studying theatre design, I understood then much much more that I was out of the loop. When I was at school I was dealing with it, coping with it not so badly鈥� But once I was in arts school I realised this was going to be a struggle.鈥�
Himid lives and works in Preston in the north of the UK and is a professor at the University of Central Lancashire. She was awarded the Turner Prize in 2017 and a CBE in 2018.
Her latest exhibition A Fine Toothed Comb is currently showing at the HOME Culture Centre in Manchester.
