No Instruction for Assembly, Activation IV, 2014
Installation

No Instructions for Assembly, Activation IV functions as an ephemeral and portable archive of the artist and her family who struggled through years of homelessness. Rasheed engages with these traces and residues of displacement using both found and original images, objects and texts, all functioning as specters or ghosts of the past showing up in the present, refusing to leave. Into these material traces the audience is invited to activate the space and begin mapping their own histories by installing objects, photographs, letters and other material culture of their own in a way that either establishes a relationship to the existing materials or begins a new dialogue. This process is designed to move away from audience participation to audience collaboration, activation and curation. The additive and collaborative nature of this installation mirrors the process of democratic archiving and storytelling where the space is no longer formed by an institution that dictates what stories are told, but rather a space where all stories hold weight.

Photo credit: Whitney Browne