Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska transform Lisson Gallery into an immersive meditation on loss, migration and belonging.
26 May 2026
At Lisson Gallery, ‘Zanzibar’ (1999–2023) reunites the collaborative practices of Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska in a richly layered installation where painting and sound converge as vessels of memory. Originally conceived through a series of abstract diptychs painted by Himid in 1999 and reanimated through Stawarska’s immersive sonic composition in 2023, the exhibition unfolds as an intimate reflection on displacement, remembrance and emotional inheritance.
Floating throughout the gallery in a fluid arrangement, Himid’s geometric canvases mark a rare departure from the figurative language for which she is widely celebrated. Vibrant tessellations, angular forms and recurring motifs evoke fragments of Zanzibar, the East African archipelago where the artist was born, alongside memories shaped by migration to London following the death of her father. The paintings resist fixed narration, instead operating as sensory fragments suspended between abstraction and autobiography.
Stawarska’s eight-channel soundscape threads through the installation, weaving archival recordings, Taraab music, opera, and spoken text, guiding viewers through overlapping histories and imagined geographies. Together, the artists create a shifting landscape of sound and image that speaks to the fragile architectures of belonging, where memory is carried not only through objects and stories, but through rhythm, silence and repetition.
This exhibition will be on view at Lisson Gallery, London, from 4 June until 22 August 2026.
