Lubaina Himid: Water Has a Perfect Memory

Hollybush Gardens presents an exhibition of new paintings by Lubaina Himid. Across varied materials, Himid addresses Black experience in its fullness, dealing with subject matters such as desire and love, endurance and belonging, everyday exchange and transformation. Water Has a Perfect Memory traces progress, or its lack thereof, in 2021 — a year in which questions of time, as Himid expresses, ‘its shape, its colour and its passing’, were left unanswered. This exhibition attempts to address time’s heterogeneity by recalling or reimagining variations of writing, including diary entries, quotidian notetaking or invented sentences from long letters. By resurrecting text through painted composition, Himid evokes the passage of time and its numerous, resonating pasts.