Kameelah Janan Rasheed Gives Language a Body

For the latest episode of the show, I have the honor of speaking with artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed on the occasion of her inclusion in Data Consciousness: Reframing Blackness in Contemporary Print, on view at Print Center New York through December 20, 2025.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner and death doula in training. Her middle name, Janan, comes from the Arabic trilateral root (J-N-N / جنان), evoking that which is unmoored, veiled, and unsanctioned. Accordingly, Rasheed explores the relationship between language, mysticism, and disobedience. She examines the materiality of wayward language - acrobatic (Clarice Lispector) sentences with trap doors (Fred Moten), runaway syllables that scatter to the marooned edges of a page, words that escape the orbit of its mother sentence, footnotes that consume their reference, and utterances that dissipate before being recorded. She also explores the materiality of reading, centering spiritual practices where reading happens through touch and digestion, rather than solely looking. A "language person" (Paul Soulellis), she "gives language a body" (Chang Yuchen) through her large-scale installations, multichannel video works, publications, software, performance, public archives, and learning platforms.

Read full bio here.

This episode was originally published exclusively on Patreon on December 11, 2025.

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