Artist Book Launch: Footnotes to a Typology of Laundry Stands
Meeting with the artist Rabila Kidwai
Join us for the launch of Footnotes to a Typology of Laundry Stands (self-published) by studio resident Rabila Kidwai, in conversation with Lubnah Ansari.
This book is a collection of footnotes to the drawing series A Typology of Laundry Stands, a set of drawings depicting laundry stands birthed domestically through notoriously makeshift ways. The drawings explore how inhabitants habitually exceed the intended functions of the spaces that contain them. Within the urban condition of Dubai’s apartment blocks, the simple act of drying clothes is a negotiated one, dictated by the spatial contours of the apartment itself. They reflect a specific vernacular of everyday resourcefulness common to a demographic that belongs to the more crowded part of the city.
The footnotes operate as manuals for the drawings, framing these hybrid forms as functional objects. They produce a set of affordances, suggesting how the forms might be handled, imagined, or enacted. Drawing on Gibson's theory of affordances, the footnotes establish relational possibilities between object and viewer, inviting audiences to perceive the drawings not as static images but as entities with latent capacities for use and interaction. In this way, the meanings of these everyday objects emerge through the actions they appear to invite.
Rabila Kidwai is a UAE-based visual artist and designer from Pakistan whose work explores the poetics of gendered and collective spaces. Her practice draws on the urban environment as a site of spatial bricolage, documenting the quiet negotiations of everyday life and conditions of close domestic proximity. Working across visual art, film, and publishing, Kidwai maintains an artistically driven design practice grounded in arts and culture, with a sustained interest in print and independent modes of production. She is a recipient of the Studio Support Programme at Dom Art Projects and the Shaikha Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship 2024–2025.
Lubnah Ansari is an artist, researcher, and webspinner. Her curiosities orbit around thresholds of the body: ruptures, translation, haunting, silences, and critters. Currently, she is working with tongues, sand, and images as materials. She holds an MA from the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and a BA from NYU Abu Dhabi.
This book is a collection of footnotes to the drawing series A Typology of Laundry Stands, a set of drawings depicting laundry stands birthed domestically through notoriously makeshift ways. The drawings explore how inhabitants habitually exceed the intended functions of the spaces that contain them. Within the urban condition of Dubai’s apartment blocks, the simple act of drying clothes is a negotiated one, dictated by the spatial contours of the apartment itself. They reflect a specific vernacular of everyday resourcefulness common to a demographic that belongs to the more crowded part of the city.
The footnotes operate as manuals for the drawings, framing these hybrid forms as functional objects. They produce a set of affordances, suggesting how the forms might be handled, imagined, or enacted. Drawing on Gibson's theory of affordances, the footnotes establish relational possibilities between object and viewer, inviting audiences to perceive the drawings not as static images but as entities with latent capacities for use and interaction. In this way, the meanings of these everyday objects emerge through the actions they appear to invite.
Rabila Kidwai is a UAE-based visual artist and designer from Pakistan whose work explores the poetics of gendered and collective spaces. Her practice draws on the urban environment as a site of spatial bricolage, documenting the quiet negotiations of everyday life and conditions of close domestic proximity. Working across visual art, film, and publishing, Kidwai maintains an artistically driven design practice grounded in arts and culture, with a sustained interest in print and independent modes of production. She is a recipient of the Studio Support Programme at Dom Art Projects and the Shaikha Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship 2024–2025.
Lubnah Ansari is an artist, researcher, and webspinner. Her curiosities orbit around thresholds of the body: ruptures, translation, haunting, silences, and critters. Currently, she is working with tongues, sand, and images as materials. She holds an MA from the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and a BA from NYU Abu Dhabi.
DATE
August 1, 2026, 4:30PM
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