Viewing Lubaina Himid unravels colonial histories in Bath

When visitors arrive at the Holburne Museum in Bath this week, they’ll find swaths of colourful Dutch wax cloth wrapped around its pillars. Inside the museum, the fabric weaves through the galleries of the permanent collections and piles up in mounds on the floor. This textile takeover is orchestrated by British artist Lubaina Himid for Lost Threads, an exhibition that reflects the movement of the oceans and rivers that have been used to transport cotton, yarn and enslaved people throughout history.

Humid uses reams of the fabric to expose the shameful past of the historic figures immortalised on the galleries’ walls. Among them are George Byam, a third-generation plantation owner, and his wife Louisa, whose own family was involved with the Royal African Company, painted by Thomas Gainsborough. The wax cloth – made in Holland yet synonymous with the African continent – has a complex, multi-cultural history and in Himid’s hands, it becomes evenly more densely layered.