Raisa Kabir weaves her works in the lampas structure, a compound cloth that was the fabric of kings and the wonder of great empires – Mamluk, Mongol, Mughal. Yet these are not textiles that seek to overawe. We see the backs of the works, with their weft threads traveling in and out. If imperial textiles depicted the mastery of the hunt, the shikargah scene, or the triumphant warrior with bow and arrow in his hands, Raisa Kabir’s works unpick and upend the triumphalism, revealing the unseen structures of the cloth. Held within a lampas textile are binding warps; above, are floating wefts. These are structural names that betray the tension and foundations, but also the release and fragility that work together in a supple silk surface. The intertwined nature of binding and floating, of enemies and brothers, of deep-seeded grief and the possibility for pleasure emerge too in the stories that Kabir’s textiles tell.

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