Kamilah Rashied: It's Time For Mirror Looking

It was my deepest pleasure and honor to share space with Kamilah Rashied a few days following the start of the global uprising for Black Lives. Kamilah is performance artist, writer, educator, producer, arts administrator, and Director of Education at the Court Theater. I am so grateful to call Kamilah a friend and comrade whose sharp cultural criticism and curation of Black sisterhood I treasure daily.

Irina: I got into this practice because I wanted to make space for deep listening. I wanted to get back into painting and observing because it is very meditative and healing, as opposed to constantly scrolling and consuming. My intention is for this practice to be collaborative. I don’t want to just assume what I know what your portrait should look like. Before I put brush to canvas, how would you like to be depicted?

Kamilah:  I definitely want my melanin to pop. I want people to understand that my melanin has not cracked, that “Black don’t crack”, that I do not look like the life I’ve lived, that my face does not show the age of how I feel. Other than that… my vanity. 

I don’t think a lot of people know that my first degree is in performance. I came up in a culture of critique. I also had super well-meaning, but critical parents… I grew up around criticality and I think it’s why I rationalize everything to a fault. But, as a person who loves to think about ideas, I’m also really curious about other people’s expression, which is why I think being a facilitator of other artists has always brought me a lot of joy. 

Because I am a creative and because I make my own art, people are always asking me about my aspirations around my art and I’m like, that’s therapy. That has a different place in my life. That’s part of my spiritual practice. That’s part of how I maintain the humanity I want to maintain. I don’t judge anyone -- and I support a lot of people who mechanize their art for income and other purposes that are not just spiritual. I learned over time that it was something I needed to do, this is only a spiritual practice. This is about me being well, about me processing, about me preserving my humanity, and that is something I do not care to monetize or bring into an industry. 

But because I value artists who fold that into their work, I think the work I can monetize is the work of supporting those people and giving them an opportunity and a platform... and cultivating those people, as young people. Whether they want to be a professional artist or they just want to get through the day…  this is there for them. So that’s my work, and then I have my own practice that’s just for me. But I am curious and infinitely interested in other people’s ways of working, which is why I wanted to do this project. I think it’s  a beautiful way of you utilizing your own practice.

 My Pressure Suit project -- I started as a journal.  My mother was unwell, and she’s my pillar, and it was hard to even accept that it was happening. I had just left a relationship that was toxic that I had been in for a really long time. I had invested my energy in and defined myself by it in ways that were natural and other ways that were unhealthy. I was  working at the Art Institute at the time, and I was surrounded by whiteness in a lot of different ways on a lot of different levels, I’ve never minced my words around that. I felt a lot of distress at that time, and Black Lives Matter kicked off, Me Too kicked off; and I was feeling buried. 

And then the 2016 election happened and I was like, I’m gonna take a nap like Sleeping Beauty. I just spent a year feeling tired, on every level, just tired. I started to write because I think I was unconsciously doing what I’ve always done, which is trying to heal. At first it was a journal , I was hurting and it needed to come out somewhere and I didn’t feel the strength or the energy to  pursue my healing any other way at the time. I ran some of it to a friend of mine and she was like, “Oh, this is a project.” And I resisted that for so many reasons, including the ones I shared before… She said, “Well, I think this could be helpful to other people.” I eventually started to share it with people and those I shared it with were like, “This is powerful.” 

I give spiritual homework -- and sometimes the thing I am working on is overarching, something I am trying to work on the whole year to internalize. That year I was  working on asking for help. I had realized how my psychology around individualism, do it yourself-ism, having to hustle, having to struggle in isolation had become part of my identity in a way that was toxic. I was entitled to help, you know, I deserve help. I had to accept that I struggle with asking for it… part of it was pride, but a lot of it was shame. Learning early on that asking for help was shameful, and then having a lot of things reinforce that lie. So whenever I would feel overwhelmed, I’d sit back and ask, who can help you?

In this moment, when I was struggling to make this project that I clearly wanted to share -- but was struggling to share because it was deeply personal, I reached out to a few people and said, “I need help. And it was beautiful how people were like, “Okay! What do you need?” It felt so good on a lot of different levels to just accept care and help in that way.

Jane Beachy had asked me if I would come to Salonathan and read some of the stuff I was working on. Roy Kinsey asked me if I’d come to some of his shows and read some of what I was working on that had to do with his Blackie album. We were hanging out and talking about  issues of race and identity a lot and what we were talking about would end up in a song. I just thought it was beautiful that there was no filter, that it was seamless -- this album he was making to heal. Then Derrick Woods-Morrow asked me to write a prologue for an exhibition he was doing with Chicago Artists Coalition because I was doing some studio visits with him and we talked a lot about growing up in scenarios of abuse. 

He asked me to write a piece about it, and it was actually quite difficult. I realized there were things that I was still censoring, that even when I wrote things, there was a censor before I even allowed myself to write about certain topics. What I admire about Derrick -- is that he fearlessly shares deeply private aspects of his life in his work.  I’ve admired his courage around transparency. I realized that I was kicking it and talking to and being invited by friends  whose work is deeply personal and autobiographical to share my own... I knew the universe was telling me, this is what I want you to do. It felt like an instruction.

Over the last few years, I’ve done different iterations of this project and the process kind of unfolded  as I was doing these things, sometimes with other people and sometimes on my own. A lot of the presentations were  organic… the last one I did was in Folayemi Wilson’s Dark Matter exhibition and it was a perfect space because when I envisioned this project, it was about isolation and infiniteness and the extremes of Blackness and being Black. It was also about a world of your own where you get to fully appear, -- how that feels like being in the middle of space, this sense of unmeasurable isolation that I think sometimes comes with Blackness in the face of white supremacy.  

I guest taught a class at the Hyde Park Arts Center, and I believe in a non-paternal way of teaching, so I asked the teens what they wanted to learn, like what can I support you in learning? And they gave me a broad set of topics and asked, “How are you gonna teach that?” And I said, “Well, that’s my job to figure out.

They were really interested in was Black Nihilism. Instead of narrowing in on that exclusively, which can be deeply morbid -- -- I decided instead to focus on Black existentialism. I showed them all these really beautiful Black thinkers throughout history. What I loved is that they were like, “Aw shit, I wanna Google that right now!”  Learning doesn’t have to be paternal -- young people are curious and nothing brings me more joy than seeing them Googling Audre Lorde or W.E.B Du Bois, trying to understand what does it mean to be Black in America?

I also introduced them to rhetorical devices as a part of that mediation. At that time, Donald Glover’s “This is America” came out so we watched that and they could connect with that because it was recent and they were thinking about it and had seen it. Then I showed them the NAACP’s flag “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” and getting into what does that really mean? We  talked about “Sí Se Puede” -- and how “Yes we can” came from “It can be done.” We looked at people who live in Chicago right now, like Krista Franklin and William Estrada and they were like, “Damn, these people live in Chicago?” Over the course of that course, they got introduced to  people through different media. What I love about teaching in this way is that they’re all thinking the same ideas but this is how they manifest it differently. 

I wanted them to understand that art and aesthetics always have played a role in protest. This idea of art not being political is not true -- all things are political. 

I definitely had never seen myself as a person who was interested in scholarship but I have a friend from high school who moved here from New York, and she was calling me an “Academic” and I was borderline… insulted! And that’s because of my own baggage that I have with the Academy and white supremacy. So I was like, “What bitch?!”  I had not really thought of myself in that way. But, I do teach… I have taught at universities, I got my Masters for that purpose because I understood the necessity of Black women teaching in cultural industries and how important that could be -- at the wide mouth of the funnel -- working to dismantle Colonialism. So much of what I admire and what I’m interested in is  informal ways of teaching. For me, the greatest teachers that I’ve known have been part of radical movements and wanted to make sure we  were informed about our  rights or how they were being infringed upon. That, to me, has always been the most important teaching I’ve ever gotten. Whether it was watching a video of an old protest or, somebody I know -- like, every time I talk to Erika Allen -- she schools me on food justice shit that I didn’t know. Every time I see Anton Seals, he’s like, “Let me tip you on this housing shit so you understand how that works.” For me, that’s where deep learning has always happened. 

Irina: What are some things you’re learning in this moment? 

Kamilah: I’m about to turn 40 and I have mixed feelings about that. I think aging, maturing, growing means you get softer. I’ve noticed that in my parents, who are very tough people,  they don’t play games, but they’re also becoming very tender and soft as they get older and it’s beautiful to watch that. 

Last night, my sister checked in on me but then I was feeling okay and I checked in on her. And she said she was taking some mental health days. So I stopped and thought, well say the most gentle thing you can possibly say right now.  She’s feeling really raw, how can you be very tender in your response? What I said to her was:  “I’m available to you, let me be a resource. That’s what sisterhood is. And I’m not just theoretically your sister, we blood. So you let me know.” I’m realizing that’s important. There’s a track near my house and I go there to jog -- There were these boys who had come to the field that probably would’ve been in football practice for a season that’s not going to happen and I think a coach was running drills with them. When the practice broke up, right as I was doing my last lap, some of the boys started to wrestle. And my immediate response was, oh I don’t know if that’s safe. And then my next thought was, Black boys die for so many other reasons that are horrific. It might be okay, it might even be beautiful if they die from a hug. Those Black boys needed that. Even if it could be dangerous.Black boys are in danger regardless and this is the kind of danger I can accept. And then I wanted to burst into tears. So moments like that are just a sign of my maturation, I think. I don’t know if I would’ve had a thought like that years ago -- like look at those boys roughhousing -- they need that, boys deserve affection. 

It feels very rich to be able to realize I can have these deep emotions about what’s happening because I have the skills to do it, the willingness to do it and I’m not afraid to do it at this point in my life.  All the information you get as a Black person and as a woman says that if you’re not  of service, if you’re not laboring, then you’re not important. You’re not seen unless you’re taking care of something for someone else. I’ve had to really sit with that and feel good about how I’ve  grown into a place where  I get to feel and have all my feelings.

So I’m in my feels! A lot of this pandemic has  me in my feels, a lot of crying -- a lot of different kinds of crying because there are lots of different kinds of tears. A lot of gratitude because I have a lot of support in a lot of different ways. My bedroom faces this circle of the sky that is encapsulated by trees, and one of my favorite things is to fall asleep looking at it. It’s like the last thing I see and the first thing I see in the morning -- this beautiful circle in the sky, this crescent shape of trees around it and the different light throughout the day. Now I have a sense of agency and entitlement to enjoy those moments all the time because I don’t feel the same intensity of the world because of the pandemic. I get to notice all the opportunities to have gratitude and joy.

Irina: Thank you so much, Kamilah. I have one more question that I’ve been asking everyone, which is Grace Lee Boggs’ question: What time is it on the clock of the world?

Kamilah: Mmmm. That’s a hard question. I think in the face of the pandemic, it’s time for mirror-looking, but I think in light of recent events, it’s time to look in the mirror and to see the community you’re connected to behind you. To recognize you are an active participant in what the world is, that it’s not just this ephemeral thing out there. There’s me living my life and then there’s policy, matters of justice and economics. But that’s informed by you and the choices you make every day or choose not to make, they affect somebody else. It’s time to really sit with that. 

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This conversation was lovingly transcribed and edited by my dear friend, writer, and cultural organizer Rivka Yeker. You can check out their work at @hooliganmagazine. Kamilah also provided extensive editing for clarity and cohesion. Thank you Kamilah for your creative labor and immenseness generosity!