Lubaina Himid came to prominence in the early 1980s shortly after leaving art school. She was one of the first artists to be involved in the Black Arts movement in the UK and continues to create activist art that engages with issues of Black identity in a multicultural society whose institutions continue to display conscious and unconscious forms of discrimination. Trained in theater design and cultural history she brings her knowledge of theater and theatricality to her paintings, which narrate stories about marginalized and silenced histories. Humid asserts that her work is intended to valorize the historical and current contributions Black people have made in European society and culture.