Qanita Lilla is Associate Curator Arts of Africa, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, as well as a researcher and podcaster. She is interested in liberating traditional collections of Africa from their ethnographic status by engaging artists from the diaspora and considering the role of digital media in creating access in the public domain. Her practice draws on anti-dystopian methodologies embedded in visual activism from the Global South. Her fellowship research project is titled Anti-Dystopian Possibilities of Podcasting: Trust and Solidarity in Art Collectives in the Global South and North. Qanita is the 2025-26 JHI New Media and Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow.
What are your main research interests?
My research centres social justice and equity in visual arts and cultural work in Africa and the African diaspora in Canada. As a curator from South African now living in Canada, I am excited by the possibility of making public art institutions accessible and by demonstrating that, despite being deeply embedded in systems of coloniality, art museums hold the potential of envisioning an equitable future. I am interested in the ways art institutions produce knowledge: the role of protest and activisms in shaping equity, the artist's role in cultivating institutional imagining and the art collective as a body that reckons with colonial knowledges. More recently, I have become interested in creative voices outside cultural institutions, how “new media” like podcasting (which is not so new anymore!) gives a space to creatives outside official spaces. I'm also interested in what pedagogical and research potential podcasts have, and what this might mean for cultural work more broadly.
What project are you working on at the JHI and why did you choose it?
While I’m at the JHI, I am continuing a fourth season of the podcast series With Opened Mouths where I sit down with artists, poets, scholars, musicians and curators working in Africa and Canada to discuss the journeys of their creative practice. This season, the series is aligned with the JHI theme of dystopia and trust. The season intends to develop ideas of liberation pedagogies, a philosophy of education that builds on anti-apartheid icon Steve Biko’s ideas as well as the role of transnational solidarities. In this season we will see how art, pedagogy, language and music help to shape worlds of possibility, trust and resilience.
I am also working on a book chapter on the South African sound and visual artist Garth Erasmus. His hand-made, musical instruments are based on ancestral knowledges and are lovingly crafted with the detritus of modern consumerism. I think through three tracks on Garth’s album “Threnody for the Khoisan” to show how his work developed from a deep understanding of resistance pedagogies, activism and solidarity. This chapter is part of a larger book project, called “A luta continua: South African Visual Solidarities (1984-2000).” A luta coninua (the struggle continues) was a freedom song made famous by Miriam Makeba in 1980 and became a rallying cry in apartheid South Africa. The book shows the breadth and power of visual history during the latter part of apartheid and its resonances in the world today.
How has your JHI Fellowship experience been so far?
The experience at JHI has been tremendously enriching and nurturing, especially during this challenging time. It is such a rare pleasure to be able to focus completely on my research and writing and to be among like-minded colleagues. The format of the weekly lunches is a wonderful balance between the informal and the formal. It allows for enjoyment of delicious food while listening to each fellow’s research as well as their challenges. It has also been a complete blessing to have such thoughtful JHI staff on hand!
Why do you believe the humanities are important?
The humanities provide the opportunity to be critical of and challenge the current state of the world. It focuses on the thinking, labour and vision of human beings and has the potential to connect us to each other. It nourishes empathy and understanding of the world. As scholars in the humanities, we read the harrowing global news and we are critical of its story telling, we see visual images and understand that powerful voices shape stories, we hear public speeches and think about what is not being said and whose voices are not heard. Without being idealistic, I firmly believe that brilliant minds in the humanities can challenge the current world order to create a safer, more hopeful and humane world.
Can you share something you read/watched/listened to recently that you enjoyed/were inspired by?
I was inspired by fellow JHI artist in residence, Eve Egoyan’s piano recital “In Stone” at the Faculty of Music. The piece was a powerful solo sound performance and focused on the Armenian genocide (1915-1923) experienced by Eve's ancestors. Through embodied memory and piano, Eve expressed longing by creating a montage of sound fragments drawn from multiple recordings including: birdsong, Armenian liturgical music, voice and running water. She powerfully channelled the past and showed that lost fragments of past lives could create something living. At a time when the shock of mass killings around the world has become more commonplace than it should ever be, Eve’s work gave us an alternative viewpoint. She gave us a glimpse into the richness and depth of a people who have been silenced but who continue to live through her artistry.
What's a fun fact about you?
My first experience in audio media was at 13 on Radio Goodhope when I was interviewed about my role as Fat Sam in a musical production of “Bugsy Malone” at the Joseph Stone Auditorium in Athlone, Cape Town. It was ironic to be in an up-beat musical, staging battle scenes with an all-child cast and throwing cream pies, while real street battles were taking place not far from the auditorium, between the police and young anti-apartheid protestors who were throwing stones and petrol bombs.