In a conversation moderated by Uthra Rajgopal of The Whitworth, contemporary textile artists Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai and Raisa Kabir talk about embracing the medium and pushing its boundaries.

Uthra Rajgopal is the Assistant Curator of Textiles and Wallpaper at the Whitworth and is a former graduate of York University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. With a background in working with museum dress and textile collections, commercial archives and exhibitions, Uthra has developed a specialist interest in South Asian textiles and has been a contributing author to Textile History and Authenticity and Replication: The ‘Real Thing’ in Art and Conservation and is a former lecturer at Manchester School of Art. Since joining the Whitworth, Uthra has worked on the Islamic textile collection, the exhibitions Raqib Shaw, Beyond Borders and Beyond Faith: Muslim Women Artists Today. In 2019 Uthra received the prestigious Art Fund New Collecting Award which will provide funding to build a new collection for the Whitworth of South Asian textile artworks made by South Asian female artists from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and from the diaspora in the North West of England.

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Aligarh Muslim University and later pursued a Masters in Fine Arts from Jamia Millia Islamia. Working with a range of mediums including painting, printmaking and embroidery on textiles, Ahmadzai’s artistic practice is centered around women and issues concerning them, be it their sexuality or their space in both their domestic and their community. Her knowledge of Urdu, Persian and Arabic allows her to understand the nuances of language, which find their way into her work. Her works are mostly autobiographical and stem from her personal experiences of looking at marginalised communities around her. She is the recipient of the INLAKS Fine Art Award in 2019, which culminated with a two-month residency and a solo presentation at 1ShanthiRoad, Bangalore.  She has participated in Out of your Shadow, a group show of six women artists from the Indian sub-continent at Gallery Espace, as well as at The India Art Fair and the Delhi Contemporary Art Week.

Raisa Kabir is an interdisciplinary artist, who utilises woven text/textiles, sound, video and performance to translate and visualise concepts concerning the politics of cloth, labour and embodied geographies. She addresses cultural anxieties surrounding nationhood, textile identities and the cultivation of borders; as well as examining the encoded violence in histories of labour in globalised neo-colonial textile production. Her (un)weaving performances comment on power, production, disability and the body as a living archive of collective trauma. Kabir has participated in residencies and exhibited work internationally at The Whitworth, The Tetley, Raven Row, Cove Park, Textile Arts Center NYC, and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design U.S. Kabir has lectured on her research on South Asian textile cultures at Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Art London, London College of Fashion, The Courtauld, Royal College of Art, Manchester School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art.