Rafay Rashid
Rafay’s Purchase experience in his own words:
“My experience as an Anthropology major at Purchase was unrivaled in terms of providing a renaissance foundation for later pursuits which include over a decade long career in music and the art world and recently a pivotal shift towards mental health and recovery. I am currently pursuing my Master’s at Rhode Island College in Clinical Mental Health Counseling while continuing to work in music and the arts and at an intensive outpatient program, providing counseling for the substance abuse population in Rhode Island. While at Purchase, I began working for artist Tino Sehgal at the Guggenheim Museum which enabled a continuous and integrated resume assisting and producing live-art exhibitions for Asad Raza and Phillippe Parreno notably at the Park Avenue Armory in 2015, the Whitney Museum in 2017, and Kaldor Public Art Projects in Sydney in 2019. Throughout this time, I honed my own experience as a performing artist, notably as the official performer at the 2017 Whitney Biennial and traveling to Shanghai, performing at the Rockbund Art Museum for a two-week art program called Displace the same year. I have released five records with Brooklyn-based punk label Almost Ready Records and have played hundreds of shows in Providence, Rhode Island, where I currently reside and work. My other projects include Happiness, which is a four-piece art-rock outfit comprised of myself and the members of nationally-renowned band Deer Tick.
SUNY Purchase’s Anthropology program gave me the critical thinking and writing skills to be able to make sense of the world in its fragmented and interwoven form; ethnography as art form was crystallized and distilled in courses such as Drugs, Bodies, Design, Anthropology of Sound and Listening, Contemporary Japan, and Informal Economies. Today, I find myself applying my anthropology background to nearly every pursuit; from songwriting to substance abuse counseling, the Anthropology program at SUNY Purchase has given me the toolkit to live life from a culturally-curious and analytical perspective. In February 2024, I received a national minority fellowship for substance abuse counselors from the National Board of Certified Counselors, which will ensure my commitment to work with underserved populations in the field of substance abuse and mental health.”