The Queer Mythologies of the Displaced Global Weaver
by: Raisa Kabir , December 13, 2021
by: Raisa Kabir , December 13, 2021
Raisa Kabir’s latest craft practice project forms a creative response to the realities of displaced South Asian weavers.
Raisa says:
‘The performance in the moving portrait is a kind of queer ‘drag’ on embodying South Asian narratives. A performed fantasy of the craft labour/er. As this weaver doesn’t really exist in any land or geography. The moving portrait is set in an idea of nature, untethering the land and geography in relation to the crafted labour of Paisley designs, where the woven shawls originate in Kashmir, and the motif is found across textiles spanning the northwestern region of South Asia up into Afghanistan and Punjab.
The body of this craft labour/er has been displaced. I, performing these weaving actions, with these materials, in this place, am creating a fantasy based on the mythology of this weaver. There is no recreation. It aims to challenge the viewer to reexamine the histories placed on, or erased around the provenance of textiles and textile patterns. How this is intimately connected to border violence and colonial borders in that region, where decimated textile heritages and continuation of hand weaving brocade shawls has declined, and how that is linked to Scottish and British interaction, and the consumption of paisley patterned cloth divorced from the Boteh.’
View our slideshow featuring a selection of images from Raisa’s project.
Recently, Raisa has also appeared in a film on the same subject which was shot by videographer Julia Brown. It was part of the CCA Glasgow Exhibition in May 2021.
WHO SUPPORTS US
The team of MAI supporters and contributors is always expanding. We’re honoured to have a specialist collective of editors, whose enthusiasm & talent gave birth to MAI.
However, to turn our MAI dream into reality, we also relied on assistance from high-quality experts in web design, development and photography. Here we’d like to acknowledge their hard work and commitment to the feminist cause. Our feminist ‘thank you’ goes to:
Dots+Circles – a digital agency determined to make a difference, who’ve designed and built our MAI website. Their continuous support became a digital catalyst to our idealistic project.
Guy Martin – an award-winning and widely published British photographer who’s kindly agreed to share his images with our readers
Chandler Jernigan – a talented young American photographer whose portraits hugely enriched the visuals of MAI website
Matt Gillespie – a gifted professional British photographer who with no hesitation gave us permission to use some of his work
Julia Carbonell – an emerging Spanish photographer whose sharp outlook at contemporary women grasped our feminist attention
Ana Pedreira – a self-taught Portuguese photographer whose imagery from women protests beams with feminist aura
And other photographers whose images have been reproduced here: Cezanne Ali, Les Anderson, Mike Wilson, Annie Spratt, Cristian Newman, Peter Hershey