Solo Exhibition By Turner Prize-Winning Artist Lubaina Himid Opens At Glyndebourne

A solo exhibition by Turner Prize-winning British artist, Lubaina Himid CBE RA, opens today 19 May 2023 at Glyndebourne Festival 2023.

What Does Love Sound Like? features a series of large-scale paintings and objects in response to the operas being performed at the prestigious festival this summer - they include Mozart's Don Giovanni, Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites and Handel's Semele.

Himid trained in theatre design at Wimbledon College of Art and her love of opera has informed her practice for the last 40 years.

Himid said: 'My work is all to do with action and something unfolding. Like in opera, the narratives in my works are not static. Opera, for me, is extraordinarily real. I love it because it's the way I experience life.'

Born in Zanzibar in 1954, Himid's works uncover marginalised and silenced histories, figures, gender, class and cultural moments. A leading figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s, her work continues to tackle social and political issues, whilst engaging deeply with the art historical canon. Spanning painting, drawing, installation and printmaking, Himid's works are characterised by their bold colour, use of pattern, sensory subject matter and performative elements.

The exhibition at Glyndebourne (Himid's first at an opera house) explores the multi-layered forms of opera and its sensory pleasures. In these works, Himid draws on her private memories of listening to opera with her stepfather together with experience of seeing live opera.

Himid said: 'When I began the paintings for Glyndebourne, I saw it as a chance to experience an expanded version of my everyday activity...On the canvases you can find delicate hands, straining penises, disconnected hearts, floating brains, severed necks and pursed lips. I thought about the immense, multi coloured sounds and at the same time the broken, seductive, powerful and sometimes hilarious human bodies and embarked on the next stage of my adventure to find out what love actually sounds like'.

Glyndebourne are grateful to Hollybush Gardens for their generous support with this exhibition.

The exhibition in two parts taking place in Glyndebourne's Gallery 94 and Old Green Room. The work in Gallery 94 is available to view by all ticket-holders to the 2023 Glyndebourne Festival between 19 May and 27 August. The Old Green Room part of the exhibition can be viewed by appointment. The whole exhibition will also be open to visitors to two Family Open Days at Glyndebourne in September.

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