Studio A4 | Raisa Kabir

Portrait of artist Raisa Kabir standing outdoors wearing a green shirt, grey scarf and dark jacket. Courtesy of Raisa Kabir. Photo: Tiu Makkonen.

RESIDENCY: 2 – 31 March 2026

Raisa Kabir’s Studio A4 residency at Primary supports the development of new textile-sculpture works exploring queer hybridity through weaving technologies and material histories. Drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, Kabir approaches weaving as a compound structure through which identities, traditions and forms remain in motion rather than fixed.

Current research focuses on Lampas, a complex compound weaving structure used across Asia, the Middle East, China, North Africa and the Mediterranean, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age. In Assam, where Kabir’s research is rooted, related compound structures appear within silk weaving traditions using Muga, Paat and Eri. While Lampas is the Latin term commonly used in museums, the structure is also known as Khinkhwab or Kimkhwab in South Asia and Kemha in Ottoman contexts. Kabir’s work attends to how these layered naming histories shape the ways textile knowledge is transmitted and understood.

During the residency, Kabir is developing a series of large-scale fibrous sculptures that transform ceramic and metal walking sticks into loom-like structures. These works reflect on labour, disability and production through the body, expanding an ongoing enquiry into weaving as both a material process and a political framework. Suspended from the ceiling and cascading towards the floor, the sculptures form a site-responsive installation that extends ideas first explored in The Body is a site of production… resist resist resist! at Yorkshire Contemporary (formerly The Tetley), Leeds.

Research undertaken during the Studio A4 residency contributes to the presentation of new work in Queer Texture at Primary and will inform the development of a forthcoming solo exhibition in Glasgow.

Raisa Kabir’s Studio A4 residency is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.