{"id":4263,"date":"2025-04-21T17:41:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T17:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/21\/review-nets-for-night-and-day-at-mudam-luxembourg\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T17:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T17:41:09","slug":"review-nets-for-night-and-day-at-mudam-luxembourg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/21\/review-nets-for-night-and-day-at-mudam-luxembourg\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: \u201cNets for Night and Day\u201d at Mudam Luxembourg"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Magda Stawarska, Shimmering Moment, Lisbon<\/em>, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London \/ Photo: Magda Stawarska<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHow does someone born in Poland or East Africa end up in northern England?\u201d wonders artist Lubaina Himid<\/a>. The straddled feeling of having roots in two places is something she shares with Magda Stawarska<\/a>, her artistic collaborator in \u201cNets for Night and Day,\u201d an exhibition at the Mudam in Luxembourg. The Turner Prize-winning Himid (1954, born in Zanzibar) and multidisciplinary Polish artist Stawarska (1976, born in Ruda \u015al\u0105ska) were colleagues-turned-friends while professors at the University of Central Lancashire, where Stawarska still runs the silkscreen\/screenprinting workshops, and where Himid taught in the fine arts department up until 2021. For over twenty years, they have been supportive of each other\u2019s work, whether toying with silkscreening or sound pieces.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNets for Night and Day\u201d is one of their many entwined projects. Just before Himid won the Turner Prize, Stawarska remixed and recomposed the soundtrack (from 2005) for Naming the Money<\/i><\/a>, Himid\u2019s installation of 100 cutouts. This was the pivot point at which trust was solidified in their art binary.<\/i> They next collaborated on a work called the Blue Grid Test,<\/i> made for a group show at WIELS in Brussels in 2020-21; the Blue Grid Test<\/i> was then included in Himid\u2019s 2021-22 Tate Modern show. The two are currently in the middle of preparing another show<\/a> for Kettle\u2019s Yard in Cambridge, to debut this summer. Moreover, they often visit each other\u2019s exhibitions, even if they work on them independently.<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>
Works from Himid\u2019s Zanzibar<\/em>, shown here in \u201cLubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska: Plaited Time \/ Deep Water\u201d at Sharjah Art Foundation, 2023. Courtesy of the Sharja Art Foundation \/ Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cNets for Night and Day\u201d is, as curator Omar Kholeif<\/a> describes, \u201ca true and genuine convening.\u201d The wall texts are epistolary excerpts between the curator and artists, reflecting warm exchange rather than didacticism. The titular \u201cnets\u201d are symbolic, per Himid, \u201ca voluminous thing, a material thing, but full of gaps and emptiness and nothingness.\u201d The show has over fifty works made between the 1990s and today, all threaded with themes of migration and memory. This exhibition is the second chapter (although re-envisioned) of a version shown in Sharjah in 2023.<\/p>\n

Mudam\u2019s West Gallery is overtaken by the installation Zanzibar<\/i> (1999-2023), a newly conceived presentation of nine diptychs painted by Himid in the 1990s. These were reinvigorated by a new 38-minute multi-channel sound piece composed by Stawarska that includes recordings of trickling rainfall culled from England and Zanzibar, as well as voice-over vocals from BBC Radio 3 programs Himid listened to while painting.<\/p>\n

Stawarska\u2019s sonic component changed Himid\u2019s relationship to her existent works and, for her, the paintings are now only to be shown as an installation inextricable from the audio. For Stawarska, the sound is meant to \u201cperambulate\u201d\u2014it is emitted from white speakers that stand sentinel to the paintings, suspended above a dove-gray carpet. For Himid, revisiting past work from her archive is rejuvenated and newly potent through this collaboration.<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>
Magda Stawarska, Tensio, Katowice<\/em>, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London \/ Photo: Magda Stawarska<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mudam\u2019s East Gallery features Himid\u2019s clustered paintings of fanciful ships and architectural boats\u2014big, long or in little studies\u2014which were initially made for her show in 2005 at the Bowes Museum in the north of England in response to its holdings of ceramics and jewelry and carpets collected by the aristocrats who once resided there. The boats suggest human presence, but there is a total absence of people within the works. In this way, the boats also allude to darker histories, namely the British trade of African slaves. To Himid, \u201cthe sea is not a site of holiday\u201d but something more treacherous. It can still be poetic, however\u2013Himid cites Toni Morrison<\/a>: \u201cAll water<\/keyword> has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stawarska\u2019s \u201cwallpaper\u201d screenprints belie Himid\u2019s works, unrolling horizontally across the gallery like table runners, layering overprinted patterns that, she says, resemble a \u201ccomputational error.\u201d Stawarska\u2019s m\u00e9lange of print, paint and collage at once obscures the original patterns and reveals \u201ca new matrix.\u201d Stawarska and Himid first bonded over a shared love of patterns\u2014Himid\u2019s mother was a textile designer. Hanging her paintings atop Stawarska\u2019s screenprints \u201cmade me see my own work, which I\u2019ve lived with and know very well\u2026 in a quite different way,\u201d Himid says with delight, a refreshed gaze imbued into her own production.<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>
Lubaina Himid, So Many Dreams, 2021-2022. Courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London \/ Photo: Gavin Renshaw<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to paintings, Himid displays reinvented everyday objects (as she puts it, \u201cIf it stands still, I like to paint it\u201d). Here, there are found doors and drawers; in the past, Himid has gathered a whole dinner service\u2014plates, tureens, jugs\u2014and painted on those. The gesture is about reinvesting an approachable object with new meaning and narrative.<\/p>\n

The last display is a smattering of Himid\u2019s Sharjah Carts:<\/i> vintage farm wagons sourced from Eastern Europe, alluding to potential departure and uprooting and \u201cwhat you take in a hurry.\u201d Stawarska\u2019s adjacent filmic works\u2014videos shot in Poland along the Bosphorus and in Vienna of landscapes and graffitied walls and electrical poles unfurling from the windows of moving vehicles\u2014are nestled in the floor vents, facing upwards towards the glass roof.<\/p>\n

While Himid and Stawarska interlink often, Himid will be independently representing Great Britain at next year\u2019s Venice Biennale. When queried if she had been marked by past editions of the biennial, she mentioned Fred Wilson<\/a> at the U.S. pavilion as memorable and, more recently, Wael Shawky<\/a>, last year\u2019s Egyptian representative. As for a foretaste of her own pavilion\u2019s offering: \u201cThere will definitely be paintings\u2026those are really always consistent to what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/b>Nets for Night and Day<\/b><\/a>\u201d is at Mudam Luxembourg through August 24, 2025.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>
Installation view of \u201cLubaina Himid: Barricades\u201d at Hollybush Gardens, in London, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London and Greene Naftali, New York \/ Photo: Eva Herzog Studio<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Dual<\/p><\/div>\n