Habda Rashid
Habda joined Kettle’s Yard in 2021 as Senior Curator, Contemporary and Modern Art, working across the Fitzwilliam Museum and Kettle’s Yard with a remit to shape and deliver collections-based research, public programming and curatorial work on the collections of 20th and 21st-century British art, within a global context.
Habda was appointed Senior Curator at Create London in 2019, and stepped up to interim Artistic Director in 2021. She was formerly part of the curatorial department at the Whitechapel Gallery and has taught on the MFA programmes at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths University as well as MA in Curating at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Her extensive experience of contemporary art has seen her commission new works and curate exhibitions with a wide range of artists including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Shezad Dawood, Michael Rakowitz and Veronica Ryan. She has supported emerging British artists to produce new works including Larry Achiampong, Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and Joy Labinjo. She has also written for and edited numerous publications, writing texts on artists such as Leonor Antunes, Elmgreen & Dragset and Michael Rakowitz. Habda has sat on numerous selection panels, was a Trustee for PEER Gallery and is currently a Art Historian Association Curatorial committee member.
Habda’s favourite part of the Kettle’s Yard House:
One of my favourite works is Christopher Wood’s ‘Flowers’ (1930). Cut flowers have appeared throughout my curatorial career, Tina Madotti’s, Roses (1924), Hockney’s, 30 Sunflowers (1996) and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s depiction of indoor plants and flowers, these every day and domestic compositions are often loaded with meaning. Christopher Wood’s vibrant delicate flowers alive with movement draw my attention, even though inconspicuously positioned by Jim Ede. And tragically he died young and at a time when his work was beginning to be recognised – I can’t help but wonder how Wood would have have developed as an artist.
