For her installation in Kissing through a Curtain, titled Each sentence is a sponge!, artist and educator Kameelah Janan Rasheed considered Xerox machines as translators of historical archives and individual memories. As Rasheed cut up and pieced together texts, new relationships between words and images emerged, opening up space for new (hi)stories. Her talk will encourage visitors to wander through texts, drawing their own playful connections.

This event is free with gallery admission and will take place in Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s exhibition, in Building 4, 3rd floor—purchase admission here. Admission is always free for MASS MoCA members. Not yet a member? Become one here.

About the Artist
Kameelah Janan Rasheed grapples with the poetics, politics, and pleasures of the unfinished and uncontained. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the 2017 Venice Biennale, ICA Philadelphia, Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Public Library, The Kitchen, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. She is the author of New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019) and An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019).

Major support for Kissing through a Curtain is provided by the Artist’s Resource Trust (A.R.T.) Fund, a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. SAHA provided production support for Aslı Çavuşoğlu. Programming at MASS MoCA is made possible in part by the Barr Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and Mass Cultural Council.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Each sentence is a sponge!, 2020
Site-specific installation including framed images, paper, paint
Courtesy of the artist

As installed in the exhibition Kissing through a Curtain (MASS MoCA, 2020). Photo: Kaelan Burkett.