Lead White

A profound and poetic new installation by internationally renowned artist Zarina Bhimji, presented at Tate Britain. Consisting of over 100 unframed photographs and multiple embroideries, Lead White is a meditation on power and beauty. It is the culmination of a decade-long investigation conducted over multiple continents, delving into national archives to capture details of embossing, stamps, words and lines.

Zarina creates poetic narratives by editing and repeating these details, as if constructing a musical composition, in order to explore what archives do, how they categorise, and how they reveal institutional ideologies. The work also combines digital and physical crafts – including the use of embroidery for the first time in Zarina's practice – drawing attention to textures and traces, light and shadow.

Zarina was born in Uganda and lives and works in London. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007, exhibited at Documenta 11 in 2002, and is represented in numerous public collections including Tate, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.