Lubaina Himid
Accidental Encounter, 2021

The leading contemporary artist Lubaina Himid was born in Tanzania in 1954. In the 1980s, she became a central figure in the British Black Arts Movement. Also a curator, she won the Turner Prize in 2017. Himid uses drawing, painting, and installations to explore the Black experience, developing a body of work that echoes her own interest in the history and consequences of colonialism, giving pride of place to men and women largely overlooked in visual representations of the colonial experience.

The large-format canvas Accidental Encounter shows a man walking alone on a beach. A piece of driftwood is slung over his right shoulder, representing grief, according to Himid. He is looking at a phoenix flying ahead of him. The work is typical of Himid’s artistic and discursive practice in several ways. It incorporates the sea and the beach, both ambiguous sites overlaying pleasure with memories of the slave trade. They are captured in geometric shapes, structuring the space of the canvas along with the sky where the phoenix takes flight. Himid uses swathes of bright orange and yellow to attract the viewer’s gaze and draw them into the narrative. The staging and title both suggest a turning point for the character, shown encountering a mythical creature heralding rebirth. Unlike other of Himid’s works in which characters are connected by conversation or actions in a shared time and space, the figure is shown here alone: the man’s accidental encounter puts him in touch with natural and symbolic elements.