‘My personal/political strategy is to take stock of what is history, our history to reiterate what is already fact and to challenge the gaping holes opened up by the present negligent practice’; so Lubaina Himid summarises her radical and revolutionary priorities as an artist. Over the decades, and across her paintings, drawings and mixed-media installations, she ‘takes stock’ of ‘what is history’ – as defined according to dominant western criteria – in order to interrogate, destabilise and resist the widespread whitewashing of ‘our history’. Himid assumes the role not only of an artist but also of a historian, memorialist and witness to take the centuries-old white supremacist lens to task by filling in the ‘gaping holes’ of African diasporic political, biographical, social and cultural histories. ‘It is obvious that there can be no real future unless the past is consolidated, recognised as present and used as a guide for the future’, she confirms. Working to create radically revised and rewritten visual and textual histories, which then become serviceable in contemporary Black freedom struggles worldwide, Himid's bodies of work provide alternative blueprints of artistry and activism. ‘Black women who have been working since time to create a context for our creativity must be supported by artists in this’, Himid asserts. She is in no doubt that ‘to have work challenged, analysed and talked about can only empower the artist and extend the dialogue’.

At the heart of Himid's many declarations of independence as communicated in her determination to ‘empower the artist and extend the dialogue’ is her rejection of all myopic interpretations of Black female art-making traditions as either monolithic or isolationist. Rather, as Himid theorises, she and hundreds of Blackwomen artists – past, present and future – are the collaborative creators of a multi-layered and ever-shifting ‘context’ for their ‘creativity’ according to which experimentation is the order of the day: no form, subject or practice is off-limits. ‘The themes in the work of black women artists cover a wide spectrum’, Himid confides; ‘We are making ourselves more visible by making positive images of black women, we are reclaiming history, linking national economics with colonialism and racism, with slavery, starvation and lynchings’.