Interdisciplinary artist, Quilla Constance will deliver ‘Intersect’ a live performance incorporating improvisational, atonal cello in and among her latest paintings and costume-installations on view at The Higgins Museum & Art Gallery, Bedford as part of her solo show ‘Teasing Out Contingencies’ - This event is FREE ENTRY - no need to book.
In the words of Quilla Constance (AKA:QC)
I am an interdisciplinary artist of (Black) Jamaican and (White) British heritage. I deploy my practice concurrently across the media of live performances, paintings, costumes, photographs, and music videos – strategically staging these artworks across varied contexts such as: art galleries, lecture halls, theatrical venues, music clubs, social media, the street, and mainstream television. My practice seeks to conflate and activate the intersections between these cultural zones/learned categories, to agitate, amuse and surprise audiences – ultimately highlighting the absurdity of hegemonic systems of categorisation which are often injurious, since they restrict and marginalise BAME, female, LGBTQ+ and working-class identities.
As well as activating my hybrid, biracial heritage and resultant alternative ways of seeing, I’ve learned to navigate different social groups within society – i.e. from my working-class childhood in Birmingham, through to the privileged environment I encountered as a student at The Ruskin, University of Oxford. As a result, my inscription within any specific category is ultimately non-specific, which affords me the licence and the daring to cross between these established structures and narratives; to interrupt and re-write our readings of them in liberating new registers, and to highlight what feminist theorists have long asserted – i.e. the performative nature of identity and power.
This project is supported by Arts Council England, Tate Modern, Bedford Creative Arts and Bedford Borough Council.
