Habda Rashid

Senior Curator Modern and Contemporary Art

Habda Rashid is the first senior curator of Modern and Contemporary art at the Fitzwilliam. Central to her role is developing new perspectives within the collection in a global context and to therefore identify new acquisitions to better represent the diversity of art in the 20th and 21st centuries. Habda is also the lead curator on the major exhibition: Glenn Ligon:  All Over The Place, the first major exhibition by a Black artist at the Museum. Habda’s role previously stretched across Kettle’s Yard, where she was responsible for the house and its collection, where she also curated the exhibition, Paint Like The Swallow Sings Calypso. It was the first exhibition that brought together collections of Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam.

Broader research interests include examining how the post-colonial complexities of genealogies and geographies challenge existing histories of art to expand subject matter, ideas and media. She is also interested in the intersection of colonial legacy and the climate crisis, and the shifting definitions attached to the term ‘global’ in artistic practices.

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, Eva Rothschild, Emma Smith 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, and has had writing published on her own diaspora experience.

Habda is a Wolfson College Fellow, an advisor for the British School at Rome, Fine Art Faculty and a 2025 Turner Prize Jury member  .