Aunties 11

Himid’s Aunties (2023), first exhibited in her solo exhibitions Make Do and Mend at the Contemporary Austin, Texas and the FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2024) is a series of 64 plank paintings which recall her previous plank works and evoke the form of funerary objects from East Africa. The title references the figure of the ‘auntie’, an interstitial role that is both familial and friend. Constructed from architectural remnants, bits of furniture, floorboards, and travel crates, which are then painted and embellished with a variety of objects, each plank embodies a unique character, underscoring the a’s ongoing interest in the politics of discarded materials. Himid has likened the Aunties to a gathering of the women in one’s life who are neither mothers nor grandmothers; it is a memorial to the friends of one’s family and to the women hanging around the house. For Himid, the auntie is a figure for whom there are no fixed rules and who defies the normative codes of relations. As Zoé Whitley writes: ‘Aunties real and invented flood to mind when viewing himid’s Aunties. They stand tall and erect; a few slouch nonchalantly. They are a formidable group and individually alluring. They hold space for one another and for each of us, too – a chosen family congregating to pay respect to our aunties.’