“There are

brown ways
of being queer”
28 DECEMBER 2015

028 Raisa Kabir.indd 28 04/11/2015 09:08


Raisa Kabir’s work looks at the
overlaps between gender and ethnic
performativity. In/Visible Space, her
collection of photographs examining
the QTPOC experience, was included
in the GFEST group exhibition Asian
Future at the Menier Gallery recently.
DIVA: How did In/Visible Space start
off?
RAISA KABIR: I studied textiles at
university and wrote my thesis on how
South Asian queer women use clothes
to construct their identities. At that
time there really was nothing out there
for us! There are so many different lan-
guages of queer. For example, in this
project I talk to women who feel like
“the outsider” if they enter a lesbian
space wearing the hijab. I wanted to
explore that extra layer of otherness in
these photos.
In the exhibition you collate images
together to form a montage. Can
you explain your interest in montage
as a technique?
For me, montage is a way of bridg-
ing photography and film and also a
vehicle for storytelling. It’s a way of
capturing the moving moment.
There is a piece of text quoted along-
side your work which reads: “And
they looked at us both on the street,
holding hands, they stopped and
the car stalled, while we waited to
cross… My queerness was erased, be-
cause you passed as a teenage boy, or
she chose not to see you as a woman.
And it was me who was shamed, who
was shamed for holding a white boy’s
hand in public, shamed for being a
brown girl with a white boy.” Is there
a story behind this story?
When you have multiple identities you
are constantly being misread. You have
no control over how others see you.
Even if you are a person with short
PHOTO HENGAMEH YAGHOOBIFARAH
hair, wearing clothes that are tradition-
ally “queer”, if you have brown skin you
are automatically read as heterosex-
ual. On this occasion, my partner was
misread as a white teenage boy. I was
unaccepted by this particular brown
audience because of being with “him”;
my own identity, thus, was reduced
028 Raisa Kabir.indd 29
and I became the outsider. The pain
and frustration of this type of experi-
ence travels with you wherever you go.
Your photographs look at the impor-
tance of safe spaces for QTPOC com-
munities; can you talk a little about
the process behind the work?
As a photographer I want to facilitate
other people’s stories. I built a rapport
with the people in my pictures over
the course of a year. To start I would
ask, is there a space where you feel
safe to be South Asian and queer at
the same time? And if one didn’t exist
for that person, we set about creating
it together. Every single photo sprang
from the participant’s own ideas about
how they wanted to see themselves.
The set of photographs I found
particularly moving were taken in a
barber shop. Can you explain more
about these?
Sita, one of the participants, wanted to
disrupt the public, racialised, hetero-
sexual space of a Pakistani barber shop
in Whitechapel by placing her Indian,
lesbian, masculine-of-centre identity
within that space and recording the in-
teraction. I think the resulting portrait
is very important because it under-
mines the Islamophobic narrative that
sustains the “homophobic brown man”
trope.
Channel 4’s documentary Muslim
Drag Queens and BBC3’s recent
exposé How Gay Is Pakistan attest
to a surge of interest in QTPOC lives.
What are your thoughts on main-
stream media?
A lot of the queer South Asian people
in my community are weary of the
media and especially the victimhood
narrative that often accompanies
documentaries and articles on QTPOC
communities. I wouldn’t sell these
pieces because, for me, it’s not about
making money but reaching out to
young people who are wondering how
to talk to their families about being
queer and a person of colour.
Does your work visualise intersec-
tionality?
It’s a snapshot. The work happens at
| INTERVIEW | RAISA KABIR |
RAISA KABIR an intersection between all these dif-
CREATES ferent identities and ages and gender
PORTRAITS IN presentations. People say queer
WHICH HER Muslims don’t exist. This is a lie. We
SUBJECTS CAN do exist! We are visible. Not perhaps
EXPRESS THEIR in the way that you would like us to
IDENTITIES ON be but in these quiet spaces, in these
THEIR OWN private spaces – and that’s totally ok!
TERMS There are brown ways of being queer.
WORDS DORA
MORTIMER Creative survival and radical activism
seem to be a theme that the artists
involved in Asian Future all share;
how does your input reflect this?
I am invested in grassroots spaces.
Space is hard won in London, particu-
larly for a member of a marginalised
community. The work began whilst I
was studying at a very white, pretty
racist university. I was the only person
on my course looking at racial politics.
I made the work in order to find other
people like me! I made lots of lovely
friends when I first moved to London
and started going out on the gay
scene. But there was always this tug,
this isolation that was born out of rac-
ism. It was through this urgency that
the work was made. Yes, it was do or
die; it felt like if I didn’t make that work
I was going to die.
Do you envisage a particular audi-
ence for your work?
I’ve had lots of thank yous from
younger South Asian and Bangladeshi
queers. The fact that my parents felt
able to engage with it really mattered
to me. My mum even came up to me
afterwards and said, “So there is quite
a large queer Muslim community?’ and
I replied, “Yes, yes there is!”
“People
After having spent a good year asking
this question to others – where is the
say queer
space Raisa Kabir feels most comfort-
able being South Asian and queer?
Muslims
Ahh, it would be somewhere in
Manchester, my hometown, in my
don’t exist.
house. My mother’s kitchen maybe?
Yes, it would be something to do with
This is a
my family.
lie. We do
In/Visible Space will be shown in Bangladesh in
2016. See images from the exhibition and learn
exist!”
more about Raisa’s work at in-visiblespace.co.uk
and raisakabir.com.
DIVAMAG.CO.UK 29
05/11/2015 14:03
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