Raisa Kabir
[b. 1989, UK] lives and works between London and Chicago. Kabir utilises woven text/textiles, sound, video, and performance to materialise concepts concerning the cultural politics of cloth, gendered archives, and colonial geographies. Kabir’s (un)weaving performances and tapestries comment on histories of trans-national power, global production, and matrixes of labour. Her textile works uses a queer theory of entanglement to weave discourse around disability, resisting function and the queer racialised body as a living archive of collective trauma.
She has participated in residencies and exhibited work internationally at, among others: The Whitworth, The Tetley, Glasgow International, Craft Council London, Ford Foundation gallery NYC; and has lectured on her research at Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Art London, The Courtauld, and the V&A.
Selected Press:
ArtReview, Liverpool Biennial 2023 Review: The Shadows of a Slave Trading Past, 2023
The Guardian, Liberty, equality … embroidery: the political power of textile art, 2023
Wallpaper, Liverpool Biennial 2023 explores the legacy of slavery, 2023
Craft Magazine, 2022
Craft Magazine, 2021
BBC, British Textile Biennial 2021, 2021
Frieze Magazine, The Art of Queer Support, 2020
Apollo, The Whitworth Art Gallery’s 130-year mission to make itself useful, 2020
The Art Newspaper - Three exhibitions to see in London this weekend, 2020
Art Monthly, Decolonising the Canon, 2019
Frieze Magazine, The Artificial Divide Between Fine Art and Textiles is a
Gendered Issue, 2018
BBC Radio 4, In pursuit of beauty programme, In Stitches, 2018
Textile Cloth and Culture Journal, Aesthetics of Blackness issue, 2018
Posture Magazine Issue 2, 2016
Diva magazine November issue, 2015
