Recently I learned the difference between strategy and tactics. Tactics have to do with the particular maneuvers, methods, and gambits employed to achieve an overall strategy. Strategy is the bird’s-eye view. It is also typically the perspective taken by those who work in the higher echelons of government. These bureaucrats are less concerned about one farmer whose business might be adversely affected by a set of tariffs, and more invested in what impacts all the farmers in a particular region or country. Part of the difficulty with living in the time of the modern nation-state is that while you matter to those who manage it, you don’t matter nearly as much as you do to yourself or to your intimates. Lubaina Himid, through her “strategy paintings” on display in the exhibition Make Do And Mend, looks at the functionaries who wield this depersonalized, dehumanized perspective and, importantly, looks from their vantage point.
The acrylic and charcoal paintings that flatly render Black men and women seated around tables featuring different configurations of small objects are polychromatic, with tunics, desks, and walls each delineated in distinct fields of washy color. It is important that the figures are Black, which makes the point that people of color around the world do have the power to direct and control others in aggregate. Himid thus conveys the sense that there are many such rooms and bureaucrats, as well as resources that need to be considered and allocated.
Simply by rendering these seated figures and placing the objects they move about on a table, she sets up a power differential. We talk about “having a seat at the table” because those who are standing in the room where key decisions are made (if allowed in the room at all) typically have less decision-making power than those who sit. You may be limited to being an observer. And placing items on a table reduces them in scope, makes them manipulable, and abstracts them. A group of lemons doesn’t represent produce from a particular farm. Rather, it signifies larger conglomerates, bigger concerns, as in the painting “Bitter Battles” (2023), where lemons that are caged under armatures versus ones placed on plinths, versus ones further down the table that have no associated accoutrements, seem to represent a whole region’s harvest.
In most of the paintings, the protagonists eye each other as if engaged in negotiation, as their hands hold or gesture toward the objects in play. Because we are unfailingly biased, these negotiations aren’t just dictated by logic, fairness, or objectivity. In “A True and Perfect Plot” (2023), a figure dressed in white hugs the central figure in green as he mulls over the fate of livestock placed in between distinct environments. This situation suggests that personal connections are often used to advance the agenda of one administrator over others with competing claims. The same can be observed in “Pointless Heroism” (2023), where a woman leans toward a man with a crowned head while a third character watches both of them with skepticism at a table scattered with knights in medieval battle armor — which I imagine stand in for armed forces.
The frightening ramifications of this abstraction of the human within policy initiatives are evident in “Cosmic Dentistry” (2023), where teeth are scattered on a table between two figures, one of whom is masked in the color of the background wall so they blend into it. Bones and teeth are the human body parts that tend to survive mortal injuries and hold clues as to who carried out the killing. I think of the bodies recovered after mass murder campaigns, and how the government officials actually responsible for organizing these atrocities escape accountability. We lose the best part of ourselves when we allow government officials alone to recognize the perpetrators and assign responsibility for barbarity carried out in the name of preserving the public order. Too often the perpetrators are permitted to remain hidden — this is one reason why a free and independent press is needed right now in every society on the planet.
Maquettes on the table in “Predicting Positions” (2023) appear to represent solar systems, slyly alluding to the ambitions of some of our current oligarchs to colonize other planets in our galaxy. This painting is one of the most eloquent and damning critiques of this class of people and precisely what’s flawed when we are obeisant to them: Those empowered to supervise large swaths of humanity too often dehumanize us, whether through the levers of state, financial, or political power. We may need the table, to be able to place our resources on a level playing field and have administrators asses them in stark terms. But, Himid asks, what are we losing in doing so, and what have we already lost?
Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend continues at the Flag Art Foundation (545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan) through February 8. The exhibition was co-organized by the Flag Foundation and the Contemporary Austin.
