Curator, researcher, and writer Dr Qanita Lilla joins Agnes’s team—and joins us in Kingston from Cape Town, South Africa—in the newly created position of Associate Curator, Arts of Africa. Qanita’s work looks to make sense of and provide alternatives within an exclusionary museum world. She is interested in excluded epistemologies, depictions of traumatic histories and collections, representations of racialized minorities and the social roles of museums.

Qanita Lilla has a PhD in Visual Arts from Stellenbosch University, South Africa (2018). Most recently she worked for a heritage consultancy, tasked with designing the permanent exhibitions for the new National Museum of Lesotho, researching and writing about restitution and provenance. She was also guest lecturer in Art History at the University of Cape Town, teaching the course “Decolonising Art Museums,” which explored the colonial violence embedded within South African art museums.

Qanita begins her appointment with the path-breaking exhibition With Opened Mouths.