Throughout a career spanning four decades, Lubaina Himid (born 1954, Zanzibar; lives and works in Preston, UK) has explored and expanded the possibilities of painting and storytelling to depict contemporary everyday life and to fill gaps in art history through the centering of Black figures and experiences. A self-described “painter and a cultural activist,” Himid rose to prominence in the 1980s as a pioneer of the British Black Arts Movement and a staunch advocate for the contributions of women of color to the visual arts. She is the recipient of both the 2023 Maria Lassnig Prize and the 2024 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, among others, and her first exhibition at Greene Naftali will open this May.

Dr. Omar Kholeif was born in Cairo to Egyptian and Sudanese parents. They are a British artist, author, curator, historian, and broadcaster who has curated more than seventy exhibitions and produced over 100 commissions of film and visual art on five continents. Kholeif is director of collections and senior curator at Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF), UAE and the founder and co-director of artPost21. Dr. Kholeif is a visiting professor in critical race, visual art history, and the creative industries at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art Research Unit at Teesside University, UK. Their hybrid social history of art and technology, Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs, was published by Phaidon in 2023.