The artist Raisa Kabir weaves together sound, video, performance, and textiles, studying the deep link between craft and exploitation—colonial and commercial. She recognizes that textiles are imprinted with “a shared knowledge of a heaviness in the body,” and that the bodies used for labor have been exploited by capitalist systems. The central work in this exhibition is a video of Kabir’s performance on the Scottish coast. Submarine war heads lurk like sharks under the surface of the sea, while Kabir works on a backstrap loom in the same waters. The loom is a reference to the 1859 Indigo Revolt in Bengal, where after centuries of oppression farmers finally rose up against their colonial “partners.” —E.C.
The Arts Intel Report
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
Raisa Kabir: নীল. Nil. Nargis. Blue. Bring in the tide with your moon...
When
Sept 3–26, 2020
Where
Enclave 5, 50 Resolution Way, Deptford, London SE8 4AL, United Kingdom
Etc
Raisa Kabir, “Nil. Nargis. Blue. Bring in the tide with your moon…,” 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and Indigo + Madder.