Education School Art Institute Chicago MFA - Fiber Material Studies (ongoing)2024
University of the Arts London Post Graduate Certificate - Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication 2022
Royal Holloway University of London Post Graduate Certificate - Cultural Geography 2020
Chelsea college of Art and Design 2013 BA Textile Design degree (woven pathway)
Manchester Metropolitan University 2010 BTECH diploma Foundation in Art and Design |
Employment
Lecturer Textile Design (Maternity cover) - BA Textiles - Central Saint Martins 2021 - 2022
Associate Lecturer – Graduate Diploma Textile Design - BA Textile Design - Chelsea College of Art and Design 2020 - (ongoing)
Associate Lecturer – BA Performance Design and Practice - Central Saint Martins 2020 - 2021
Selected Exhibitions and Performances
2023 ‘Tiger, Tiger. Silk throat…’ Art Asia Now Fair – Paris
2023 It all starts with a thread – Whitechapel Gallery - London
2023 Threads Breathing Stories into Materials – Arnolfini – Bristol (textile exhibition with Yinka Shonibare, Lubaina Himid, Alice Kettle)
2023 Liverpool Biennial 2023 uMoya – ‘Utterances’ – Solo survey at The Bluecoat – Liverpool UK
2023 AntiBodies - Performance residency and festival - HH art spaces x The Tetley gallery with the British Council ‘House Full of water’ 24hour weaving performance and public sculpture, Fort Aguada - Goa, India
2023 Traces of Displacement – Whitworth Gallery – Manchester UK
2022 Cotton: Land, Labour, Body exhibition - Craft Council Gallery– London UK
2022 Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning – Ford Foundation Gallery – New York
2022 Festival of Making – Blackburn UK
2022 Queer Radical Textiles – Shed Studio – London, UK
2021 Time to Rest – ArcadeCampfa – Cardiff UK
2021 Thread - Elysium Gallery, Swansea UK
2021 'Resistances' Art in Manufacturing commission, British Textile Biennial, Burnley UK
2021 'NO PROTECTION' Fabric of Society - Glasgow International - The Deep End, Glasgow, UK
2021 'House Made of Tin' 2020 weaving performance film, Ford Foundation Gallery, NYC, New York
2021 ‘A Disabled Artist/Art Worker contract’ – Bare minimum collective ICA London
2021 'Gather your spools, let your hair down for me. Gently. Here. Undo.' 2021 Ambi - CCA, Glasgow, UK
2020 ‘নীল. Nil. Nargis. Blue. Bring in the tide with your moon…’ Indigo + Madder, London, UK, Solo show
2020 'Fat Corset' 2010, Between Cloth and Skin - Fabric, Touch and Identity - Compton Verney Art Gallery, UK
2020 Indigo Performance, Indian Art Fair, New Delhi, India
2019 Picturing Climate - Tate Exchange (built a ground loom entirely out of found objects) London
2019 ‘Two Loom Cloth’ - Weave It! Stour Space, London, UK
2019 Art In Manufacturing, British Textile Biennial, Queen Street Mill Textile Museum, UK
2019 ‘BODY LOOM’ collective performance at Tate Britain with Tate EYF, London, UK
2018 ‘Build me a loom off of your back and your stomach’ Performance, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK
2017 ‘The Body is a site of Production…’ Performance, The Tetley Gallery, Leeds, UK
2017 Textile Art Center, NYC, New York, U.S
2017 ‘You and I are more alike…’ Performance, 56 Artillery Lane - Raven Row, London
2017 Beyond Borders, South Asian Textiles exhibition, Tapestry ‘It must be nice to fall in love…’ Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK
2016 ‘Warping the borders, fringes; fractured…’ Performance video, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK
2016 Warped - An exhibition on Sound and Weaving, Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, North Carolina, U.S
2016 ‘Tati’ - Emerging Bengali Textile and Fashion, Rich Mix gallery, London
2016 Towards Marg, Alchemy Festival, South Bank, London
2015 South Asian Futures, Menier Gallery, London
2015 Asymmetric Grief, Arcadia Missa gallery, London
2015 In The Seam, woven collaboration with Raju Rage, Link Gallery, Manchester UK
2014 Rites and Rituals, weaving performance, INIVA, London
2014 Femme Hive/ Queer Feminine conference Berlin, Germany
2014 Guest Projects Residency, Weaving performance with QTIPOC Arts, London
2014 (in)visible space, Queeristan Festival, Amsterdam
2014 (in)visible space: queer dimensionality, space and affect, Rich Mix, London
2013 Textile Degree show, Chelsea College of Art, London
Selected Speaker/Lectures/Presentations
2023 ‘Weaving world’s - MA Contemporary Curation and Collections – Chelsea College of Arts
2023 – Textiles Lecture - Materialising the Global Textile Object – School of the Art Institute Chicago
2023 – Intertwining Climate Action and Global Industrial Textile production – Chelsea College of Arts (Textile Design and Graphic Design Post Graduate Diploma) Brief incorporating students using Jacquard Knitting designs.
2022 – ‘Decolonising Textile Design Tools’ paper Futurescan 5: Conscious Communities Conference, University of Leeds, Association of Fashion & Textile Courses (FTC) with Claire Anderson
2022 – Constructing Decolonial Futures – Jewellery, Textiles and Materials – Central Saint Martins
2021 – ‘Politics of colour’ Textiles across networks of empire – BA Textile Design– Central Saint Martins
2021 'Artist in focus: ‘Beyond Borders’, Decolonising the Museum' - V&A Lecture
2021– Global Textile Design Networks – Graduate Diploma Textile Design – Chelsea College of Arts
2021 ‘Performance intervention as a critical practice against inaction: crafting body politics and geographies of labour’ UCL Slade School of Art lecture series, and Central Saint Martins Fine Art Lecture series
2020 Patterns of Resistance - Alt_Cph - Lab Aesthetics and Ecology - Copenhagen
2020 Textile Labour + Embodied Geographies of weaving - Kunsthalle Amsterdam
2020 ‘Materialising gendered archives: weaving, language, and the textile archive’ - Edinburgh College of Art.
2020 - ‘Craft as a material strategy for performing politics and resistance - global textile narratives and embodied geographies of making’ - RCA Textiles Lecture Series
2019 – ‘Craft geographies, nationalism and heritage economies: border violence and the construction of national cloth in Kashmir and Bengal’ London College of Fashion UAL
2018 – Tate Modern - Anni Albers symposium ‘Entanglements: the tensioned thread, the political line’ (Unweaving embodied labour) lecture
2018 – Decolonising South Asian Textile history - SADAC NYC
2018 – ‘Weaving as resistance’ lecture - Journal Cloth and Culture - Royal College of Art
2018 – Weaving as resistance: crossing thresholds, crafting identity, and lines of conflict - The Courtauld Institute of Art
2018 – Textiles and Place conference, Manchester School of Art, Manchester
2017 – To Draw the Line: Partitions, Dissonance, Art – A Case for South Asia, Blue Coat, Liverpool
2017 – South Asian Diaspora Arts Collective/ Textile Art Center, NYC, New York
2017 – Tate Modern: Collective Manifestos 4 A Collective Future, London
2017 – ‘In Search of Space’ Race and politics in art education - Glasgow School of Art
2016 – ‘Surviving the Art School': decolonising education, radical pedagogy, un-archiving and remapping our art histories, Academy of Fine arts, Vienna, Austria
2016 – Re-weaving Narratives, Artist’s Talk with Raisa Kabir, Center for Craft, Creativity and design, Asheville, North Carolina U.S
2016 – South Asian and Central American Textile collections, Whitworth, Manchester
2015 – Hidden Histories from Below Symposium, London Metropolitan Archives
2015 – IASSCX Literacies and Sexualities Conference, Intimate Subjects, Oblique Objects, and Virtual Intimacies: Crossing Bodies, Boundaries, and Borders in Bengal and Beyond, DCU, Dublin
2015 – Art and Politics, Arcadia Missa gallery, London
2015 – ‘Politics of the Art School - Black arts movement then and now,’ Nottingham Contemporary
2015 – ‘The Politics of Cloth’ with Raju Rage, Cloth, Clothes and Culture Group, Stuart Hall Library, Rivington Place, London
2014 – Contemporary South Asian Youth Cultures and Fashion Symposium, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.
2014 – Collective Creativity Performative lecture, Stuart Hall conference, Goldsmiths College
Workshops/Public engagement
2024 Weaving as Archive: looms, diaspora, and gendered threads - Workshop at The Foundling Museum with Yale School of Art and Paul Mellon Centre for British Art
2023 Shaping Space: A Conversation of Art, Disability, and Care – Surface Design Association
2023 Decolonial Approaches: Materials, Pattern, Making – V&A Dundee (History of Jute and Bengali migration to Dundee)
2022 Fiber work, Disability and Networks of care – Ford Foundation Gallery New York
2022 Xenia women’s group textile back strap weaving workshops – Six week ‘Weaving in Communities’ programme: Using craft to collaborate across language, English learning with migrant women in London.
2021 ‘Breaking down borders’ – Panel British Textile Biennial
2021 Flax weaving/growing workshops – Gateway Collective garden – Bootle/Liverpool
2021 Outburst Arts – Disability, weaving clay loom sculpture workshop - Belfast
2020 Cloth & Conversation:Dress, Memory & the Body - Quilting workshop, Compton Verney
2019 Collective Back Strap Weaving Workshop - Human Library, Bootle
2019 ‘Collectivity in times of Crisis’ teaching on ICA London Summer Programme for Yale and Paul Mellon Centre art students - ‘Weaving as a methodology in collective practice’
2019 Ecofutures: Four week weaving programme with Stitches in Time - ‘Weaving local voices - sustainability, survival and economies of labour’ in Tower Hamlets, London
2018 Workshop 'Radical Collective practice: Engaging with a politics of care and facilitating space for conversation’ - Cubitt Gallery, London
2018 Weaving Bengali textile histories - Cubitt Town Library, community engagement lecture
2018 Textile embroidery workshop with local South Asian women’s group, Loughborough Radar Loughborough project - Soon Reach
2017 Serpentine Gallery Youth Forum programme - London
2017 Mapping Textile Geographies workshop - Textile Arts Center New York
2017 Manifesto Workshop - Political arts activism - Keep It Complex, London
2016 ‘Woven stories: an intergenerational embroidery workshop’ - Leicester University.
2016 Weaving healing practice workshops - Whitworth Gallery, as part of Manchester Mela
2016 Textile mapping identities workshop - ‘Tati’ Rich Mix, London
2016 ‘Addressing Race in the Arts curriculum’ : A creative zine making workshop - Academy of Fine arts, Vienna
2016 ‘Bodies of Knowledge’ workshop - Wellcome Collection, London
2016 ‘Negotiating politics of art school’ - Nottingham Contemporary
2015 Huntley collection archives workshop - No Colour Bar exhibition youth programme - London Metropolitan archives
Visiting Lecturer experience
MA Textile Design - Royal College of Art
MA Fashion Cultures - London College of Fashion
Textile Fashion Foundation Studies - Manchester School of Art
BA Performance Design and Practice - Central Saint Martins
BA and Foundation Fine Art - Staffordshire University
Edinburgh College of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
BA Fine Art - Institute of Fine Arts, University of Chittagong
Artist and Research Residencies
Majhi Residency - Asia Now Paris - Monnaie de Paris Museum – France 2023
Antibodies – HH Art Spaces – Goa India – 2023
London’s Kitchen – We Are Panel – Design brief commission with Park Royal 2020 - 2021
A Field of Flax - Bootle cum Linacre - Human Library 2020 - 2021
Art in Manufacturing Residency - John Spencer Textiles Commission 2020 - 2021
British Textile Biennial Artist in Residence Queen Street Mill Textile Museum 2019
Cove Park Craft and Design residency programme - Craft and Design residency 2019
Chittagong Hill Tracts Indigenous weaving and textiles research - Bangladesh 2019
The Tetley - BODYWORKSHOP intensive - Performance residency Leeds UK 2017
Textile Arts Center - Textile artist in residence, New York, U.S 2017
Wellcome Collection Trust - Body Languages research project, London UK 2016
Whitworth Gallery - Artist in Residence and South Asian Textile collections research, Manchester UK 2016
Arquetopia - Woven Textiles Residency - Oaxaca, Mexico 2016
Drik Gallery, Muslin Festival - Woven textiles, heritage research, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2016
Making Histories Visible Archive, Black Arts Movement research residency - University Central Lancashire with Lubaina Himid UK 2015
Collections
‘Warping the borders, fringes; fractured…’ (Performance video) 2016 - Whitworth Gallery
‘It must be nice to fall in love…’(Woven tapestry commission) 2017 - Whitworth Gallery
'Untitled II - Jute' 2020 Private Collection
'The Body is a site of production… (resist resist resist!)' 2017 - Private Collection
Awards
Joan Livingstone Fellowship - School Art Institute Chicago - 2022
Design History Society - Student Travel Award 2019
Henrietta Hutton Award - Royal Holloway Research Grant 2018
Publications
Goddess: Fierce Women On Film – ACMI – Edited by Bethan Johnson and Matt Millikan, Thames and Hudson 2023 (Book chapter based on dissertation)
Crafted with Pride – University of Chicago press 2023
Hushed - On indigo and other things that moved - Ndidi Dike, Raisa Kabir, Lucille Junkere & Joyce Woodcock, curated by Natalia Palombo, Glasgow International 2021
Resilient Stitch: Wellbeing and Connection in Textile Art Claire Wellesley Smith, Batsford Ltd 2021
‘Jumbies’ – publication – edited by We Are Panel - 2020
The Place is Here: The Work of Black Artists in 1980s Britain Edited by by Nick Aikens and Elizabeth Robles, published by Sternberg Press and Van Abbemuseum 2019
Styling South Asian Youth Cultures: Fashion, Media & Society Edited by: Lipi Begum, Rohit K. Dasgupta, Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion, published I.B Tauris 2018
Key Words’ Art and Language Resource content Edited by Evan Ifekoya, published by Tate Gallery 2017
Surviving Art School: An Artist of Colour Tool kit Edited and Foreword Raisa Kabir; Collective Creativity, published by Nottingham Contemporary 2016
(in)visible space - Raisa Kabir 2014
Press/Mentions
Asian Contemporary Art - Oct 2023
Craft Magazine - Winter 2022
Craft Magazine - May 2021
Frieze Magazine - The Art of Queer Support in 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