Nazar, Capture, Liberation

Maryam Kashani’s work explores the relationships between physical landscapes and the sociopolitical, material, and spiritual histories and forces that emerge with and against them, with a particular focus on collective study and struggle. Her book Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival, is an ethnocinematic examination of how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive within and against racial capitalist, carceral, and imperial logics. Kashani is an associate professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign and is in the leadership collective of Believers Bail Out, a community-led effort to bailout Muslims in pretrial and immigration incarceration towards abolition.

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores communication practices and poetics across all species, states of living, states of consciousness, and substrates. She creates sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” installations; public installations; publications; prints; performances; performance scores; poems; video; learning environments, and other forms yet to be determined. Rasheed is the author of seven artists’ books, and is on faculty at the Yale School of Art, MFA Sculpture Department, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation. Rasheed founded Orange Tangent Study, a consulting business that provides artist microgrants and supports individuals and institutions in designing expansive and liberatory learning experiences.