This past summer, fifteen new paintings and an installation by the British artist Lubaina Himid were on display at the New Museum in an exhibition called “Works from Underneath.” Curated by Natalie Bell and accompanied by a pair of sound collages by Magda Stawarska-Beavan, the show was a slow-rolling wave of meditations on labor and whether toiling on our own terms can subvert a history of exploitation. Each work, a kind of odyssey through the precarious conditions of migration, revealed tangled and fraught histories of the work black people have done to build empire. What Himid deserves is a major retrospective that fully recognizes her not solely as an artist but also as a political strategist who blew open the gates of British art to make space for herself as well as her forebears, peers, and those who will come next. 
