Kameelah Janan Rasheed is artist-archivist based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from East Palo Alto, CA with brief stints in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kameelah’s interdisciplinary and research intensive practice considers ideas of selective legibility and opaqueness as a political strategy; the tension between narrative contingencies and narrative resolutions; as well as black traditions of covert literacies and self-publishing.
She has exhibited her work at Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, BRIC Art Gallery, Weeksville Heritage Museum, Smack Mellon Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, TOPAZ Arts, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Leroy Neiman Gallery, etc.
Selected residencies, fellowships and honors include: Keyholder Residency at Lower East Side Print Studio (2015), Commissioned Artist, Triple Canopy Commissions at New York Public Library Labs (2015), Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue Grant (2015), A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, Queens Museum Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship (2015), Process Space Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency (2015), Artist in the Marketplace – Bronx Museum Participant (2015), Art Matters Grantee (2014), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grantee (2014), New Museum R&D: Choreography Seminar Participant (2014), Vermont Studio Center Residency (2014), Working Classroom Teaching Artist (2014), The Center for Book Arts Residency (2013), The Laundromat Project Fellow (2013), Visual Artist Network Exhibition Residency (2013), Visual Artist Network Community Fund Expansion Grantee (2013), Center for Photography at Woodstock Residency Juror (2013), STEP UP Emerging Artist Awardee (2012) and Center for Photography at Woodstock Residency (2012).
Her work has been reviewed and written about in The New York Times, Art 21, Wall Street Journal, ArtSlant, and Hyperallergic.
Rasheed has spoken on panels and symposiums at universities including School of Visual Arts, Parsons, The New School, New York University, Columbia University, and the University of Illinois; arts institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, The Museum of the City of New York, Christie’s, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, the Center for Book Arts, Residency Unlimited and Creative Time; and archival institutions including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Weeksville Heritage Center, and Interference Archive.
Her long form interviews and essays have been published in The New Inquiry, Gawker, The Guardian, Creative Time Reports and featured on the Creative Time Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn’s radio station, Otabenga Jones & Associates (OJAK Radio).
Currently, she is the Arts Editor for SPOOK Magazine and a contributing editor at The New Inquiry.
