Raisa Kabir: I only dance, I wish we could sing
Raisa Kabir speaks about her exhibition, I only dance, I wish we could sing, at The Hub, Sleaford.
At first glance, a coracle seems an unlikely starting point for a story about global textiles. Small, circular and closely associated with Britain’s inland waterways, it is a vessel that belongs to a particular local landscape. Yet in I only dance, I wish we could sing, Raisa Kabir uses this modest watercraft to uncover histories that stretch far beyond the banks of the River Slea.
Raisa Kabir with woven coracles and gathered fibre on a lakeshore. Photograph by Emilia Beatriz.
For their new exhibition at The Hub in Sleaford, Kabir has created an installation shaped by the building’s own past. The gallery occupies the former Hubbards and Philips Seed Warehouse, a reminder of the town’s historic role in the movement of agricultural goods through Lincolnshire. As part of their research, Kabir has been tracing Sleaford’s connection to jute rope and seed sacking — materials that once passed through the warehouse in large quantities and linked this rural market town to wider international trade routes.
Raisa Kabir, I only dance, I wish we could sing (2026), detail. A woven coracle carries lengths of cloth, cord and timber, linking vernacular craft to histories of trade and textile exchange. Photograph by Jules Lister.
At the centre of the exhibition is a group of painted coracles filled with cotton, silk, indigo, flax and jute. Arranged like cargo, these raw fibres point to the long journeys of cloth and material between South Asia and Europe. Kabir’s practice has consistently examined how textile knowledge travelled across continents, often through systems of colonial trade that obscured the labour behind them. In this installation, the coracle becomes a modest but potent symbol of transport, carrying not just people but the material traces of exchange.
Installation view of Raisa Kabir, I only dance, I wish we could sing (2026) at The Hub, Sleaford, where suspended threads and woven forms transform the former seed warehouse into a loom of interwoven histories. Photograph by Jules Lister.
Above them, Kabir uses the gallery’s steel framework to create a monumental warp-weighted loom. Threads suspended through the space form a dense vertical web, turning the former warehouse into a structure that feels both architectural and alive. The work draws attention to weaving both as a method of making, and as a way of understanding how people, materials and histories become entangled over time.
Raisa Kabir, জলে উপুৰাই বাসা স্বপ্ন জাল বুনি স্বপ্ন নেয়া ভাষী (2024). The Bengali title evokes water, home and the fragile work of carrying language across distance. Photograph by Jules Lister.
Kabir, a London-based interdisciplinary artist and weaver, often works across woven text, sound, performance and moving image to explore the politics of cloth. Earlier projects have focused on overlooked histories of South Asian labour, including the Bengal Lascars — Indian sailors employed by the British East India Company, many of whom later settled in Liverpool. In Sleaford, that broader research finds a new local resonance.
Raisa Kabir with Tiger, Tiger. Silk Throat... (2023) at The Hub, Sleaford. Kabir’s suspended woven work draws together textile process, embodied labour and the architecture of display. Photograph by Jules Lister.
What makes I only dance, I wish we could sing particularly compelling is Kabir’s insistence that textiles are never neutral. The jute sacks once stored in this warehouse belonged to a trade that connected Lincolnshire to Dundee and Asia, where raw jute was grown, processed and circulated through imperial networks before returning as rope and cloth. By placing these fibres back into the space that once handled them, Kabir reveals how ordinary materials can hold the imprint of empire, labour and migration — and how even a small boat can carry a much larger history.
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Further Information:
Raisa Kabir: I only dance, I wish we could sing is on show now at The Hub, Sleaford, UK, until 5 July 2026.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Raisa Kabir, 'After the Empire Falls', 2025. Photo: Jules Lister.
All further images as credited in captions.