Kameelah Janan Rasheed
Ecosystems
May 27-September 15, 2018In 2018, two distinct installations considered the past and futures of Black critical pedagogies: Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s Ecosystems (here) and see the Black School (Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters).
Rasheed combines prints, video, and collage in an open-ended, non-linear, visual and textual language inspired by “primitive hypertext,” a term coined by science-fiction writer Octavia Butler. Ecosystems and its lively activations nurtured the idea that a mind open to both chance and intention, attentive and meandering, can generate relationships between concepts, words, objects, and experiences that are full of rich possibilities.
From Nairobi College, a two-year university founded in 1969 with political education classes in storefronts, churches, and living rooms, to her elementary school’s publishing library housed in a trailer, the artist’s hometown of East Palo Alto provided the foundation for Ecosystems. Featuring historical and contemporary printed materials, the library reflected Rasheed’s research into Black traditions of independent schools, publishing, and radical imagination. Rasheed, a former high school teacher and curriculum developer, offered classes in independent publishing, printmaking, risograph techniques, and political education curriculum development. At other times, a steady stream of enthusiastic drop-in readers, teachers, and learners made use of the Xerox machine, demonstrating a desire for access to this material, often found through happenstance.
Publication
Exhibition Broadsheet
Related Programs
Bimonthly Library Hours with the Artist
Self Publishing Workshop Series
Family Meals: Sharing Histories, Sharing Futures
Press
Kameelah Janan Rasheed on Learning and Unlearning, Art in America, Nicole Acheampoag, July 1, 2021
Q&A with Kameelah Janan Rasheed and The Black School on their New Museum exhibitions, Artspace, June 1, 2018