Unweaving Histories: In Conversation with Raisa Kabir (Part One)
By S R Shah
Raisa Kabir is a UK-based textiles and performance artist who uses weaving as a meditation on the histories of the British Empire. She says “to understand [The British] Empire is to understand a web. History is happening laterally, and we’re not taught to think laterally.” By examining the British Empire as an expansive, globalised, capitalist web, Kabir re-embodies the geographies of re/productive labour sourced from the global south and its diaspora, particularly within the historic textiles industry. Consistently paying homage to indigenous weaving cultures, Kabir builds looms within performance by using the body, a spectacle of the usually invisible labour performed by disabled, queer, femme, and diasporic communities.
In her innovative, toured performance and endurance piece You and I are More Alike, Kabir built a loom between two women of colour standing on opposite ends of a sheet of paper, their backs to each other. They would be her family members, friends, and acquaintances. I was one of those women. Standing on a seemingly endless sheet of paper for hours, barefoot, physically entangled and connected with another woman I could not see. I relied on the tautness of the string to remind me of her breathing. I could feel the gentle, rhythmic tugs of her swaying movement as Kabir hung found objects from the iconic red strings before those objects fell loosely to the floor. Kabir would then draw lines in red ink gliding outward from the mass of string, confusing illustration with texture before tracing an outline of our aching feet.
The experience was disembodying yet simultaneously grounding as I felt the dull ache of my feet become one with my existence as an art object. I was acutely aware of myself as all around me the gallery audience stood in pensive silence. The audience observed Kabir, who seemed to be lost in a meditative focus as she positioned and repositioned the packaged spices and sticks of cinnamon hanging from a thread to achieve the perfect aesthetic balance before carefully rearranging the mass of string. I couldn’t see any of this, as it was only for the spectators to witness. We stood for hours, and yet for all my purpose as an object of production, Kabir performed laborious care as she made sure we were hydrated and not pushed past our limit. Not only are we the historical total of the labour of our ancestors, but we care for each other even in dynamics of pain and production. I may have not been able to see who I was literally wrapped up with, but I could feel her living. There is much to be said about the importance of breath in Kabir’s work, and that was instrumental in You and I are More Alike.
Adorned in gorgeous silk shirts, I felt akin to an object of fascination in an anthropology museum. Was I allowed to look at those who were looking at me, or does that defeat the purpose of being an object? Standing on British soil as a diasporic subject in a post-industrial world where more questions blur the definition of a once static humanity, I wonder if what is considered an object has been a mirror this whole time. Everyone entangled in a system of material production is a series of reflections bouncing off of each other, wrapped in the delusion of separation. This time, no one is allowed to look away. In the art space, we are at once the object and the objectifier.
The breath of the woman I was tethered to guided me past the physical pain, past the resentment of the other, to accepting how integral ‘the other’ is to my life: To the self-importance of the spectacle, to the solidarity I feel daily to all people of colour, everywhere, to giving into the unpredictability of that pain whenever it flares.
Somewhere beyond the various crowds dotted within the gallery, Khairaini Barokka recited from her latest poetry collection, Indigenous Species. I felt honoured to have all my senses immersed in the artistic practices of disabled femmes as a lyrical balm to distract from the pain that moved upwards from my ankles to my knees. I forgot about the innumerable mobile phone cameras poised towards, through, and around me; I focused on my breath, which was no longer exclusively mine. Before I knew it, it was time for Kabir to gently slip our shirts off of our backs, including the string she had threaded into it. They fell to the floor, the ink was unintelligible from the thread, the found objects collapsed. Although my body was integral to the performance, or production, I would never be able to see or empathise with what the spectators around me saw.
I “missed” the performance. I missed Kabir’s concentration and her skillfulness with balancing differently weighted objects to achieve the desired tautness of any loom. A sadness descended to me as I felt overwhelming empathy with the faceless women, generations back, who traded their bodies in production and never got to taste the product. I realised it wasn’t just the two of us making up a loom. Kabir had every single person in that space playing their role in the system exquisitely.
What was happening was an interruption of production. Weaving usually yields a cloth for decoration or clothing, yet in Kabir’s performances there is nothing to physically take home. The textiles practice and industry has been rife with exploitation and erasure since the beginning of trade in the Empire. Kabir’s work features indigo, an iconic dye central to the Indigo Revolts of 1859, Bangladesh. European indigo planters in Bengal would force farm labourers into debt, leaving them with only the option to plant indigo for sale overseas. The artist says her work is more about “the act and processes of weaving. It’s not even about the cloth anymore, just the movement and repetition. Repetition is crucial in my work. With weaving, you keep repeating a movement and from that action you have a cloth. To disrupt the cloth you have to do something to disrupt that repetition. Everything, like all that leads to global warming, is being repeated. What can we do to disrupt that cycle of production?”
If beautiful fabric and exotic cloth has long been a trophy for European conquests, Kabir removes it from the dialectic space by flipping the spotlight onto the labour of production. The physical bodies and histories of those who have long been in the shadows of our material delights come strongly into focus. It also physicalises the emotional quality of repeated actions, and of the inherent connection we feel with others. I had a conversation with Kabir about You and I Are More Alike and her other shows, such as her most recent solo exhibition: Nil. Nargis. Blue. Bring in the Tide With Your Moon… at Indigo & Madder, South London.
Read Shah’s full interview with Raisa Kabir in our premier print issue of Abstractions Magazine coming in Spring 2021, which is available for pre-order now.
For more information on Kabir, visit https://lids-sewn-shut.typepad.com/blog/photography/.
Follow her on Twitter @Rai_Kabir and Instagram: @raisa_kabir_textiles_.
Shiri is a London based poet and writer. They have recently been long-listed for Spread The Word’s Life Writing Prize and have toured their spoken word throughout Europe. They are currently one-half of a new creative copywriting agency, Free Fall Write. Get in touch with them on twitter @_shirishah for any queries.
