Meet Quilla Constance: the multidisciplinary artist challenging the status quo
- Written byKat Smith
- Published date 17 October 2023
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Quilla Constance's work across costume, film and painting pushes the boundaries of genre; satirising hegemonic systems of power and forcing her audience to take note. As part of Black History Month, we chatted to Quilla – also a UAL Senior Lecturer - while we visited her current exhibition at The Higgins Bedford: 'Teasing Out Contingencies'.
Hi Quilla! Can you introduce yourself and your creative practice?
Hi! I’m Quilla Constance - also known as QC - I'm an artist and Senior Lecturer in BA Fine Art Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL.
I'm a multidisciplinary artist working across the media of paintings and costume-installations, as well as live and filmed performance. I stage my practice across diverse contexts - from art galleries, music clubs, the street, through to mainstream TV. I strategically work in this way to activate the intersections between disciplines and contexts - to satirise the limitations of hegemonic systems of power, and specifically the binary categorisation of human subjects.
What was the motivation behind becoming Quilla Constance?
I created my Quilla Constance persona to challenge the status quo, create interventions, and operate as a sort of viral infection within familiar contexts and platforms of power - whether that be deploying contemporary art interventions in museum contexts, as I'm doing here at The Higgins, or bringing performance art to mainstream comedy audiences through TV shows such as Rob & Romesh vs. In a nutshell, QC is all about pushing buttons, defying descriptions and expectations and operating in a very unorthodox, experimental way in a bid to cross boundaries of race and class, and identify new and liberated modes of being which might empower marginalised Black, Asian and minority ethnic (B.A.M.E) subjects.
Can you tell us a bit more about the role of intersectionality in your work and why it's so important?
I'm an overtly mixed heritage human subject - my late mother was white British and my father is Black Jamaican. Owing to the ways in which people insist on projecting identities onto me, it's necessary for me to identify as Black and mixed heritage - though since Black people don't always accept me as Black and clearly nor do I pass as white, meaning my inscription within these categories is somewhat lacking,
I actually feel most comfortable identifying as mixed heritage and accelerating and activating this intersectionality through my art practice, because the lived experiences of mixed heritage people such as myself are often ignored - we often fall through the net in conversations about Blackness and race. So, my art practice affords me a great deal of visibility and the overt, anarchic nature of what I do, forces people to take note.
Quilla’s exhibition
QC’s solo show called 'Teasing Out Contingencies' is on at The Higgins until 7 January 2024. It’s free entry and open 6 days a week. 'Teasing Out Contingencies' has been supported by Arts Council England, Tate Modern, Bedford Creative Arts, The Higgins Bedford and Bedford Borough Council.
Find out more about the exhibition and Quilla’s work on her website.
Upcoming exhibition symposium
This event will explore QC's interdisciplinary works and consider the navigation and visibility of diversely hybrid, intersectional, and mixed heritage black/othered identities within hegemonic frameworks of power.