WOCI (WOMEN OF COLOUR INDEX) READING GROUP. SAMIA MALIK ACTIVIST/ARTIST/ACADEMIC.
In October 2016 I founded the WOCI Reading Group with Michelle Williams Gamaker and Rehana Zamen. Before I explain the journey of starting the WOCI Reading Group, I will first discuss initial history and background of WOCI. WOCI was collated in early 90’s by artist Rita Keegan, who has a lineage of documentation within her own art practice. WOCI index’s around 120 Afro-Caribbean and Asian diaspora female artists. Index documents art history between 80’s and early 90’s. Many of these female artists explicitly and boldly made artwork fighting against institutional racism, white supremacy and 114 // PEEKABOO WE SEE YOU: WHITENESS
patriarchal structures. WOCI is kept at WAL (Women’s Art Library) currently located at Goldsmiths University. In 2015, X Marks the Spot produced a publication called Human Endeavour, a series of projection displaying slides and artefacts from WOCI. Human Endeavour was an excellent, integral introduction and also functioned as a guide book to work through WOCI. My initial research with WOCI was followed by an artist residency at Morpeth Secondary school in Bethnal Green, igniting and raising urgent and alarming questions about censorship of Afro-Caribbean and
