Lubaina Himid

Undo the Knots of Poverty

Maker

Lubaina Himid (British, b. Tanzania, b. 1954)

Title

Undo the Knots of Poverty

Year

2011

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Dimensions

Collage: 33.5 x 28 cm (13 3/16 x 11 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Inscribed, on verso of collage frame, in graphite, at top center: UNDO THE KNOTS OF POVERTY; in graphite, on UR of collage frame: 6.

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art

Object Number

2016.54

Type

Exhibition History

The Phantom of Liberty
Contemporary Works in the RISD Museum Collection
May 04, 2018 – Dec 30, 2018

Label copy

If you walk through the markets of Accra, or south London, you’ll be walking among hundreds of exuberant people of the world, yet many are descendants of slaves. You go to a Jewish wedding and the people survive, understand, carry their history. They are stronger than history, that is the point. My figures say: “You tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.”

I’m not in the business of making work where I repeat the trauma. My work is about attempting to belong, about understanding who we are as black people in the diaspora, how much we have contributed across Europe in terms of culture, building, the wealth of the European machine. Never mind the American machine, that’s a whole other story. -Lubaina Himid

Image use

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In copyright This object is in copyright

Tombstone

Lubaina Himid (British, b. Tanzania, b. 1954)
Undo the Knots of Poverty, 2011
Acrylic and pencil on paper and collage of magazine pages on paper
Collage: 33.5 x 28 cm (13 3/16 x 11 inches)
Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art 2016.54

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