As part of the ongoing Lisson Street programme, the multidisciplinary artistic partnership of Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska present a new iteration of Zanzibar (1999-2022). Reflecting on themes of memory and movement, loss and belonging, this immersive and evocative mixed-media installation comprises nine diptychs painted by Himid in 1999, paired with a 38-minute multi-layered “libretto” composed by Stawarska in 2022.

This historical series of canvases floats throughout the gallery – anchored by colourful cuboid forms and recurring zigzag patterns. It represents an anomalous passage of abstract painting and a decisive break from Himid’s distinctly figurative, narrative-rich practice, being quite unlike “anything I made before or since,” as she has noted. Entitled Zanzibar, this major suite of diptychs was created as an homage to Himid’s East African birthplace and an evocation of memories associated with the archipelago. The paintings reference early events in her life that led up to her coming to London in 1954, hastened by her father’s untimely death aged just 33 (her mother was 26 at the time and Himid was just 3 months old). Subsequent trips back to Zanzibar undertaken by the artist are also suggested in depictions of fishing or mosquito nets, shells, tiles, closed shutters and dripping tears.

The eight-channel collaged soundtrack of songs and voices, scored by Stawarska, is layered over and woven through the paintings in the same way as they have been hung throughout the space, in a freeform configuration. The sonic composition leads viewers through the installation and incorporates Taraab music from Zanzibar, snippets of opera, as well as narrated sections of a guidebook given to Himid’s mother by her father. Vignettes of life on the island and in the town of Zanzibar in East Africa are juxtaposed with archival BBC radio clips, orchestral music and Himid’s own voice. Describing her collagist style, Stawarska called the process ‘a meticulous choreography of technical layering, specifically of keeping time, to maintain the intimacy of emotion.’

Channelling both artists’ sense of relative belonging, displacement and loss from their native countries, the overall effect is of a multi-dimensional, fluctuating landscape that evokes past journeys, present desires and future possibilities, spanning more than one lifetime of thought and experience.