Lubaina Himid: What Does Love Sound Like?

What does love sound like as it enters through the entire body touching skin, organ, bone, muscle and vein with its vibration and intensity? Does it sound different as it enters through pores and orifices or, as it lingers on surfaces before being absorbed into the deepest place in the memory?

When I began the paintings for Glyndebourne, I thought about the immense, multi-coloured sounds and at the same time the broken, seductive, powerful and sometimes hilarious human bodies. On the canvases you can find delicate hands, straining penises, disconnected hearts, floating brains, severed necks and pursed lips. Through this work, I embarked on the next stage of my adventure to find out what love actually sounds like. – Lubaina Himid

What Does Love Sound Like? is an exhibition of new work by internationally renowned artist Lubaina Himid CBE RA (b. Zanzibar, 1954). Marking her first collaboration with an opera house, it draws on Himid’s enduring interest in the artform: ‘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’. From objects to large-scale paintings that respond directly to this season’s productions, this site-specific exhibition invites you to discover opera through the senses – to see, hear, feel, touch, move and think about opera in new and expanded ways.

Lubaina Himid is a multi-disciplinary artist working across painting, installation and drawing. She trained in Theatre Design and was a major figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s. Her work today uncovers marginalised and silenced histories whilst addressing the complexities of experiences through depictions of action, exchange, desire and transformation. Spanning painting, drawing, installation, printmaking and sound, her works are characterised by bold use of colour, pattern, sensory subject matter and performative elements. Himid was the subject of a major monographic exhibition at Tate Modern, London in 2021. Her upcoming solo exhibitions include Sharjah Art Foundation; The Contemporary Austin; Greene Naftali, New York; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York; and Hollybush Gardens, London. Himid is the winner of the 2017 Turner Prize and the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth | Flag Art Foundation Prize.

Glyndebourne are grateful to Hollybush Gardens, London, for their generous support of this exhibition.