Lubaina Himid

I was.

I was, but I sort of didn't...

I did it because I was full of kind of energy for making the boldest statement I could make.

I probably was naively didn't really know that I was asking for trouble because I think I thought that people in the art world who moved and shook in that world understood what they were doing.

Well, it wasn't feeding me.

I think I thought it was run by critics who had too much power to say what was good and what wasn't.

I thought it was run by the market who had much too much power to say what was good and what wasn't.

It was run by the funders who one year would think, oh, I think this year we'll give money to people who are less abled.

Then the next year we'll give to people who are from somewhere else.

It was the same kind of lottery that the rest of the art world was dealing in.

Yeah, there is.

I was 30-something and I wanted to tip it upside down.

I was much more angry about the fact that we didn't have enough spaces to show in or that we weren't being critically talked about.

My protest, my anger, wasn't really about money.

It was much more about visibility.

It was a conscious decision to move away from being poor in London and not having any work except waitressing work.

So, yeah, that was a conscious decision.

And I really thought that teaching would give me that stimulation and dialogue every single day.

It took a while to be the professor, but, yeah, it was an absolute conscious decision to stop being broke.

I think I thought it felt a bit tokenistic.