Find out more about Rabz
Find out more about Imani

Meet The Curators

We are Languid Hands, an artistic and curatorial collaboration between artists Rabz Lansiquot & Imani Robinson. As curators-in-residence at the BCA, we have invited 7 artists - Samra, Felix, Zinzi, Rhea, Anisa, Shamica & Ufuoma - to undertake a month-long research residency exploring the archives.

We know how vital access to collections like Black Cultural Archives is for artists, writers, thinkers, and activists and we are deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with the BCA on this sort of project. It is essential that in the midst of an upsurge in radical resistance to anti-black violence and carceral systems in the UK, we have access to our complex and wayward histories and are able to activate them in the service of our contemporary struggle, always inextricably tethered to times past. As abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2019) has said, “What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities. So those who feel in their gut-deep anxiety that abolition means knock it all down, scorch the earth, and start something new, let that go.” Now is the time to engage in radical sociality and deep study: across geographies, generations, and revolutionary horizons. Black liberation is the goal, and art has always been one of many means. 

The artists we’ve been working with will present their research as work in progress, fragments, and reflections on the collections they have spent time with. We always try to create opportunities to work with other artists in ways that are as open-ended and self-directed as possible, so that artists feel a sense of leadership over our projects. Curatorial practice is a collaborative process and essentially we are simply Black artists who like to work with Black artists.