Spaces of resistance: re-activating archives through community exhibitions for housing justice

This article examines the role of community exhibitions as both a space and a medium for housing justice efforts. By reflecting on the re-activation of community archives, this article addresses two key gaps in existing scholarship: first, the limited consideration of how community archives might expand access beyond a narrow circle of archival users to fulfill their social and political objectives, and second, the need for deeper analysis of non-academic dissemination, audience reception, and engagement within such spaces. It asks: How can community exhibitions enable community archives to transcend the limitations of institutional repositories? What role can they play in framing, connecting, and spatializing housing resistance, both past and present, within the broader housing crisis? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a self-organized, experimental housing resistance exhibition that drew from local community archives, I explore how community exhibitions can re-mediate and re-activate community archival materials by functioning as spaces of resonance for housing activists, platforms for personal narratives of housing struggles, and sites forging diachronic and synchronic connections across time and movements. In doing so, this article sheds light on the capacity for community exhibitions to serve as potential sites of resistance and mobilization in the context of larger movement efforts, vital to cultivating housing resistance.