Retrieving, Remapping and Rewriting Histories of British Art: Lubaina Himid's 'Revenge'

This chapter thinks about how one might begin to address a “remapping” of the boundaries of both “British” art and the concomitant practices of art history. Research into the visual resonances of Lubaina Himid's “Revenge” has taken the author on a visually, culturally, and historically rich journey that resists the closure that the concept of drawing conclusions seems to suggest. By attending to the content of her works and her divergent aesthetic strategies, the author hopes to be able to retrieve some of its legacies from the archives of the past, in the present, for the future. She also hopes to continue the dialogue with her work in the present in an attempt to rethink the borders, boundaries, and maps of British art's histories and concepts of national identity as constructed in the visual field.