Plain language/
Discovery questions

 

On this page you can learn more about the exhibition.

Below you will find questions to think about in the exhibition.

 

Who are we?

 

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is a place in Berlin where artists, institutions, and people come together to share ideas, discuss social and political issues, and experience art. We have exhibition halls, apartments, offices, event spaces, and a café, and work with partners around the world.

 

 

About the exhibition of Kameelah Janan Rasheed

 

Kameelah Janan Rasheed was born in the US in 1985. She received a prize for her work in 2022. It is called the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research.

 

In her work, Rasheed looks at how we read, write, and understand text and language. She wants to find new ways of understanding something. She also asks questions about how we want others to read and understand us.

 

Rasheed changes the meaning of scientific texts and literary texts like books and poems by putting them together in different ways. For example, changing how words are arranged or how big they are. Rasheed looks at texts in detail. Perhaps she will change the size of the words, the sentence structure, or the number of periods in a text. She gets us to think about what making these changes does to the meaning of the text. And do the changes work in the same way in different types of text? For example, would a word that was written in a poem mean the same thing if it was written in a scientific text? What is a word trying to say or do?

 

Rasheed checks the texts again and again. She asks questions and learns together with other people. In this way, she creates a connection between politics and poetry and shows what is possible through language.

 

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, presents the first major solo exhibition of Kameelah Janan Rasheed. Both the exhibition and the book that goes with it are very similar to Rasheed’s way of working. They both look at the connection between language, knowledge, and learning. The book is co-published with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

 

The Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research came from the Schering Stiftung Art Award, which was given to artists every two years from 2005 to 2018.In 2019, Schering Stiftung worked with the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community to change it to the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research. In 2022, the Award for Artistic Research was given in cooperation with KW for the seventh time.

 

<p>Kameelah Janan Rasheed, <em>Untitled</em>, 2023, Digital scan of the back of a found photograph, 12,7 cm x 12,7 cm. Courtesy Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s photographic archive of Black American vernacular images.</p>

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Untitled, 2023, Digital scan of the back of a found photograph, 12,7 cm x 12,7 cm. Courtesy Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s photographic archive of Black American vernacular images.

 

 

What to think about in the exhibition

 

You can use these questions as inspiration to engage with the works of Kameelah Janan Rasheed.

 

– How does Kameelah Janan Rasheed use words and sentences in her art?

 

– Kameelah Janan Rasheed works with archives of books, photographs, and notes. Do you have a collection or an archive? How would you want to exhibit/display it if you had one?

 

– Kameelah Janan Rasheed is interested in processes of learning. In your view, what can you learn in and from this exhibition?

 

 

Have fun!