Venice part 3
I got to personally and briefly chat with Saidiya Hartman, and we spoke about the resonance of her performance work 'Minor Music at the End of the World'. She was generous and warm. I thank her for taking the time to listen to my spirit.
She asked me what my name was, and I said Jade Foster. And she repeated it back.
/aːːː/
/ʔa/
(a visitor described it as life‑affirming)
Walking sticks used as looms. Tapestries that sprawl inward. Labels you can touch. Practices shaped by India, America, the Nordic region, and Eritrea. A platform covered in soil that a visitor rolled their back on. An 8.1‑channel sound installation sending isolated voices and sonics around them like bats echolocating in the night. A subwoofer vibrating through the platform. Performers digging to find the sun.
This show created oxygen as my breath became slow and choked.
This is hard graft done under impossible, inhumane conditions. _
ID:
A sequence of installation views from 'Queer Texture' at Primary, Nottingham, spanning two gallery spaces. Gallery 1 is a large ground‑floor room with white walls and natural light. Long suspended textile sculptures hang from the ceiling, with brightly coloured woven works on the walls. Sunlight from tall windows casts shadows across the floor. Close views show layered fibres, threads and glass seed beads; one tapestry includes imagery referencing digital interfaces and online visual culture.
One image shows an acrylic Braille wall label designed and made in April 2026 by the curator with support from Julian Bishop using laser cutting. These touchable labels sit beside the works as integrated elements of the display, foregrounding the primacy of touch within Queer Texture.
Gallery 2 is a darker space with a raised platform covered in soil. Warm light glows through the soil from panels beneath. An 8.1‑channel sound installation distributes voices and audio across speakers, forming an immersive multi‑channel work. Visitors gently interact with the installation, using their hands and holding sculptural triangular frames. Play, touch, feel, hear, see and be with texture.
🚪 On view until 18 July 2026
Raisa Kabir, Adam Seid Tahir, Amina Seid Tahir, Qualeasha Wood
Installation views and the performance at Primary, Nottingham
Curated by Jade Foster
Photography: Reece Straw
Supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Arts Council England, IASPIS, Konstnärsnämnden (the Swedish Arts Grants Committee), and The Exhibitions Group.
#QueerTexture
Pulling up with an ISBN to a gate being kept near you. 🛫🏍️🩼🚲🚗
It’s interesting because some people aren’t taking my MBA seriously despite there being 70 leaders across three cohorts from organisations such as Tate (including Mid and Senior Management), National Portrait Gallery, The Line, National Theatres, V&A, Raven Row, De La Warr Pavilion, National History Museum, Science Museum Group, Sheffield Theatres, MIMA, UAL, the National Trust, Site Gallery and countless more.
And I’m a top student due to my practice-based portfolio, which was previously marked fairly by Dr Claire Louise Staunton et al.
Time to interrogate your own unconscious bias and warped perceptions that white men in any age group are leaders. What is their leadership practice? My course is full of brilliant people—including white men—because we are all pausing to put in the work to practise practice.
Will be self-publishing soon.
PhD in Law after?
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Image Description:
A five‑slide carousel introducing Jade Foster’s ‘Taylor vs The Institution’.
Slides show pages of text outlining the author’s credentials, governance analysis and disclaimer, followed by Section 1 on governance conditions in UK small‑ to medium‑sized cultural charities. The first slide is the cover design — a diagonal split of orange and blue with the title and author’s name in bold geometric font. The second slide presents the full title and subtitle in black text over faint yellow lettering, describing the work as a leadership case study and escalation toolkit for resource‑constrained cultural organisations. The third slide shows a cropped detail of the yellow text ‘Taylor vs The Institution’. The overall tone is professional, conceptual and research-driven.
'Secondary #3': Ian Nesbitt — 'Intersections Commission #4', 2016
Whilst you’re eating your dinner or tea (we could go into which one it is, but let's leave that for another Secondary) — we have some quiet reading for you.
From those conversations grew ‘The Commoners’ Fair’, a gathering shaped by time-banking, mutual exchange and the everyday economies that hold communities together. And from that, ‘Tell Me Something I Don’t Know’ — a format that treated knowledge as something we hold in common not something we gatekeep.
This third Secondary honours the twelve years of heart that Rebecca Beinart, our outgoing Collaborative Programme Lead, has put into listening. Beinart’s happy place is the garden, it’s the cracks where the weeds grow (Raju Rage) and the life-affirming (Hood Futures Studio) moments away from institutional watchers — in the kitchen and other semi-private or private spaces.
It’s no surprise then that Becky still loves programming a drop-in today: Friday morning gardening, Wednesday after-school play, the open-door rhythm that keeps Primary porous. Social practice has always adored the drop-in because it lowers the pressure, softens the threshold and lets people arrive on their own terms. But it isn’t automatically accessible. There are still barriers — the uncertainty of entering a new space, the sensory unpredictability, the quiet question of 'am I allowed?'
A stronger drop‑in means naming the unknowns and hosting with continuity, clarity and care. So much of Primary’s present was seeded in 2016 and has been held, tended and grown by collaborators of mine and Becky’s. We’ve tried to listen together with gumption and intention — sometimes getting it wrong, sometimes getting it right. As facilitators, we study our choices and work towards a more caring economics, not one of scarcity. I don’t know if we’ve found it, but it feels like time to pause and see how far we’ve come — long enough to smell the roses.
More? Our Research page on weareprimary.org 🌐
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Credits
Ian Nesbitt, 'Intersections Commission #4' (April–December 2016)
‘The Commoners’ Fair’, 2016
TMSIDK Reflection with Rebecca Lee and Ian Nesbitt
#PrimarysSecondary #Intersections
My non-speaking performance-lecture of ‘MOUTH’ during the opening of ‘Queer Texture’ at Primary.
Image Description: A warmly lit indoor scene shows two people standing close together in what appears to be a gallery or studio space, with plain walls and visible piping overhead.
On the right, a taller non‑binary Black person with short, faded light‑coloured hair wears a white @prettyboyuglyworld T‑shirt with the text ‘Pretty Boy Ugly World’ at the front, light-coloured trousers, and a cross-body bag. In the second and third photos in the carousel, they hold a smartphone in one hand and, across all photos, a walking stick in the other, with a Hidden Disabilities Sunflower lanyard hanging from their neck. Their posture and facial expression shift across the images — from slightly tilted and expressive, as if mid‑performance, to relaxed and soft, and then to straining and engaged, with visible facial palsy.
On the left, a shorter white person with long blonde hair wears a dark short-sleeve top and brown trousers. They stand with a relaxed posture, at times looking down at a phone and at other moments facing forward calmly, hands loosely clasped.
The lighting is saturated in a deep amber/orange tone, casting a theatrical, immersive atmosphere over the scene. The overall mood suggests a live, performative moment—quiet, attentive and intimate—consistent with a non-speaking performance-lecture setting.
Image Credit: Jade Foster, MOUTH (performance-lecture), presented during the Queer Texture preview at Primary, Nottingham, 24 April 2026. Image courtesy of the performer. Photograph by Reece Straw.
I'm very excited about being in Venice for research for the second time via the accreditation route, and the opportunity to celebrate the work of @lubainapics with the British Council and colleagues across the sector.
This is only possible with my partner's support, who is a carer and access support worker all rolled in one. Grateful to have this opportunity to witness the work of the Curatorial Elder @madamekoyo , whose legacy and mind have offered grounding for my latest curatorial projects, @santiagomostyn , 'Natural History (Radio Free Grenada)' via the radio website *freegrenada.radio*🔥🌎
And also the group show 'Queer Texture' with objects and performance works by the funniest people, @raisa_kabir_textiles_ , @qualeasha , @aminaseidtahir and @adam.seidtahir .
I'm looking forward to connecting with peers during the preview events at Primary and Venice.
Taking part in @perks.sarah The Deep Energy Council developed especially for Gray's 140 @graysschoolofartaberdeen 'Anatomy of an Art School' event today, great to see people far north @darthbracey (whose provocation about studying and the Atelier was exciting to witness). We as The Deep Energy Council convened an anti-Trump Collective Manifesto for a more intimate and hopeful future. Lovely to see @rosie.hermon , Artist Development Curator at Freelands Foundation in Aberdeen! 🪔🌎
"‘The more time we spend within As We Fade, the more we fade. Images do not remain fixed or certain; they detach from their original moment and continue to act in the present. They leave behind impressions—sensations that persist beyond their source, no longer anchored to a single time or place. What remains is not a stable record of the past, but an aftereffect: the feeling of having encountered something that continues to operate, even as its origin recedes from view.’
@_jade_foster has written a breathtaking review of Saodat Ismailova: As We Fade for @balticgateshead .
Link in our bio to the full article. 🕰
Photo: Tom Carter.”
Thank you, @corridor8 and the BALTIC, for allowing me to write the best critical art review I have written as an art critic in a decade. This is a breakthrough piece for me personally — defying expectations that I’m only a racialised writer. Maybe now my peers can email me to write about something not only related to Black culture and the colonialisation and enslavement of Black people (which, of course, I will continue to write about), but also about my broader repertoire, which is a major flex. I want to review anything and everything that pulls me. I don’t always know what that pull is, but I will find out with vigour. My contribution to the art world should not only be seen through the lens of my Blackness.
IG — let me know what you think of the piece, like you gave all the love to my diagnosis and to my AI work with Sarah. Pour it into what I give breath to rather than what takes away my breath.
Thank you, @saodatismailova , for providing the ammunition.
I'm really excited that I'm buying my first home in Yarm, North East with my partner not far from the beach in Saltburn ⛱️😭🌊.
A beautiful four bed detached property that is getting built (so these are indicative images) and will be ready in May. It's a dream first home that I'm looking forward to decorating and fitting with my partner. We are not at the finishing line yet but we are hoping everything goes smoothly so we can get the keys in May! 🏡🗝️🥰
Stay tuned for the interior design posts from now on as both me and my partner are obsessed with design.
