Last week, we welcomed Dr Christine Checinska, a British artist, designer, curator and storyteller of Caribbean descent, to G.A.S. Lagos for her residency. Based in London, Christine’s multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, printmaking, installation, textiles, fashion, curating and literature. She is the V&A’s inaugural Senior Curator of Africa and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, and Lead Curator of the international touring exhibition Africa Fashion.
Over five-weeks, Christine will reconnect with her creative practice through research into indigo dyeing and adire resist printing. Drawing on the resources of the G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive, as well as exchanges with local practitioners, she will explore traditional textile-making techniques to inform her printmaking and drawing practice. The residency also leaves room for experimentation and knowledge exchange, with plans to connect with dance practitioners and scholars of traditional movement.
Doctors Cave Beach II. Image courtesy of the artist.
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
My practice explores the movement of people and cloth, concepts and ideas, historically and today. This particular project crafts a speculative history of the women that have made me, creating expanded portraits of them through drawing and text, indigo-dyed textiles and conceptual garments, movement and spoken-word performance. This interdisciplinary approach allows me to explore layered narratives around memory, identity, and materiality, and to work across both spatial and embodied forms of expression.
What drew you to apply for this residency and how do you think it will inform your wider practice?
The G.A.S. residency allows me to dedicate sustained time to developing my research and studio practice. This will enable me to deepen my interdisciplinary work and to contribute meaningfully to contemporary discourse, particularly around representation and lived experience in art and curating.
Moving with Ease. Image courtesy of the artist.
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
I will use this opportunity to experiment, to explore ideas, and to learn from indigo dyeing and adire resist print specialists. The residency also offers a unique opportunity to meet other creative practitioners in and around Lagos, sparking new conversations that may underpin new projects.
About Dr Christine Checinska
Dr Christine Checinska is an artist, designer, curator and storyteller. She is the V&A’s inaugural Senior Curator of Africa and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, and Lead Curator of the international touring exhibition Africa Fashion. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at Yale Centre for British Art in 2025, and is a Research Associate at VIAD, University of Johannesburg. She served on the Costume Institute at the MET’s Advisory Committee for Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, 2025, and the Art Gallery Ontario Advisory Group for Sunday Best, 2026. Christine exhibited her own work in EmpowerHer, Casild Art, London 2026, and The Missing Thread, Somerset House, London, 2023. Her recent publications include ‘Material Practices of Caribbean Artists’, in Crafted Kinship, Marlene Barnett (ed.), 2024. In 2016, she delivered the TedxTalk Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism.
Headshot of Dr Christine Checinska. Photo: Kayvan Michael Bazergan.