Healing The Museum. Grace Ndiritu. Motto Books

Posted in art, critique, curating, exhibitions, Monograph, Motto Books, politics, research, writing on March 31st, 2023
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“Healing The Museum” is a mid-career monograph looking at Grace Ndiritu’s diverse practice over the last twenty years, which encompasses performance, film, shamanism, social actions, painting, publications, textile work, and collection research. The large selection of artworks included in the publication are in a dialogue with each other, further enriched by in-depth conversations with Brook Andrew, Gareth Bell-Jones, and Philippe Van Cauteren, and written contributions from Ifeanyi Awachie, Ann Hoste, and Hammad Nasar. The monograph’s publication coincides with the eponymous exhibition at S.M.A.K.–Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent.

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Mizna 23.2 – The Black SWANA Issue. Safia Elhillo (Ed.). Mizna

Posted in art, books, Journals, poetry, politics, writing on March 24th, 2023
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Mizna: The Black SWANA Issue, guest-edited by Safia Elhillo and produced by an all-Black takeover team, explores the infinitely varied and kaleidoscopic nature of the Black SWANA experience.

Mizna: The Black SWANA Issue features contributions by Fahad Al-Amoudi, Salma Ali, Shams Alkamil, Ladin Awad, Lameese Badr, Romaissaa Benzizoune, Dina El Dessouky, Atheel Elmalik, k. eltinaé, Samah Fadil, Shawn Frazier, Myronn Hardy, Fatma Hassan, Asmaa Jama, Marlin M. Jenkins, Abigail Mengesha, Suzannah Mirghani, Nihal Mubarak, Umniya Najaer, Sihle Ntuli, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Sagirah Shaheed, Charif Shanahan, Najma Sharif, Faatimah Solomon, Vanessa Taylor, Qutouf Yahia, Thawrah Yousif. Interview with Charif Shanahan. Visual art by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag.

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Omen: Phantasmagoria at the Farm Security Administration (1935-1944). León Muñoz Santini, Jorge Panchoaga. Gato Negro Ediciones

Posted in books, history, photography, politics on March 21st, 2023
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Chasing the ghost, the traces of oblivion, and the echoes of what was and no longer is, the book “Omen” is a revision and reframing of the fraction of the photographic archive of the Farm Security Administration (1935-1944) hosted at the New York Public Library. That program—perhaps there is no need to add—was one of the milestones of modern documentary photography, instrumental on the constructing an hegemonic narrative; one mainly about triumph against adversity, division, and catastrophe in the recent history of the United States.

But by stressing the gaze over that monumental set of images, and scrutinizing at the corners of the pictures, at the backgrounds and details—in the secondary characters, in what should not be there, that which appears by chance, accident or error— it is possible to discover a different narrative, one that is thicker, murkier, more troubled, complex, contemporary and contradictory. Both a shatter and an apex: a premonition of the genealogical continuity of the many (tumultuous, visible and invisible, thunderous and silent) systemic violence that make up the face of American society.

A book that serves as a mirror of the distressing reality of the United States in our days, and, a the same time, as a device for reflection on the way historical and documentary photography is read and understood, taking the editorial eye to its ultimate consequences.

Photographs by Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano

Excavations at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs of the New York Public Library

Concept and selection by León Muñoz Santini, Jorge Panchoaga
Edition by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio

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Bibi. Andrea Garcia Flores. Gato Negro Ediciones

Posted in Artist Book, Artist's book, books, politics on March 16th, 2023
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Vladimir. Andrea Garcia Flores. Gato Negro Ediciones

Posted in Artist Book, Artist's book, books, politics on March 15th, 2023
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Roses of Resistance: A Dozen Tales of Active Flowers. Federico Hewson

Posted in politics, writing, zines on February 25th, 2023
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Artist Federico Hewson describes, accompanied by botanical drawings, how roses have been tools and symbols for activists and movements around the world throughout and today.

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Mang Mang Magazine Vol. 1. Mang Mang Magazine

Posted in Journals, magazines, politics on February 17th, 2023
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Mang Mang Magazine Vol. 1 is a Chinese-language independent magazine called “莽莽 Mang Mang” (meaning wild grass). The magazine includes articles, interviews, photos, and well-researched infographics documenting the recent wave of protests in China and in Chinese communities throughout the world that has led to the ending of the draconian Zero-Covid policy in China. Mang Mang Magazine Vol. 1 also deals with broader political and social issues (feminism, LGBTQ) and supports protests in Iran and Hong Kong, just to name a few.

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SEX. Raja’a Khalid (Ed.). ZIGG

Posted in critique, editions, illustration, magazines, poetry, politics, writing on January 14th, 2023
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This edition of ZIGG is interested in exploring sex as an evolutionary psychology. It brings together contributions from a network of friends, peers, colleagues who have engaged or encountered the makers of ZIGG through intellectual, psychosexual vibrations. It includes text messages, illustrations, drawings, poetry, code, conversation, rants, and essays. 

Contributors: Hala Bint, Alex Cecchetti, Common Accounts, Kelly Fliedner, Chitra Ganesh, Drew Gordon, Margaret Haines, Raja’a Khalid and Ahmad Makia, Amanda Lee Koe, and Deepak Unnikrishnan.

ZIGG is a publishing association engaged in critical thinking from Dubai. It circulates amorphous aesthetics, printed matters, and promotes the disciplinary blurring between sex, media, earth matter, magic, and politics.

Edition of 300

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STATE SEIGE. Blerta Hoçia. Pararoja

Posted in Artist Book, photography, politics, zines on December 3rd, 2022
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Blerta Hoçia reflects on the consequences of the pandemic in Albania, from the quarantine of the population to the state of siege, where as a result basic human rights were significantly reduced. Her adultery tells the story of one night, that of May 17, 2020, the demolition of the National Theater and police violence against citizens, artists and activists.

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Symbionts. Caroline A. Jones, Natalie Bell and Selby Nimrod (Eds.). The MIT Press

Posted in books, politics, writing on November 26th, 2022
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Essays, conversations, selected texts, and a rich collection of thought-provoking artworks celebrate a revolution in bio art. Expertly designed by Omnivore and printed on special papers, including chlorophyll cover and crush citrus and crush cocoa pages.

The texts and artworks in Symbionts provoke a necessary conversation about our species and its relation to the planet. Are we merely “mammalian weeds,” as evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis put it? Or are we partners in producing and maintaining the biosphere, as she also suggested? Symbionts reflects on a recent revolution in bio art that departs from the late-1990s code-oriented experiments to embrace entanglement and symbiosis (“with-living”). Combining documentation of contemporary artworks with texts by leading thinkers, Symbionts, which accompanies an exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center, offers an expansive view of humanity’s place on the planet.

Color reproductions document works by international artists that respond to the revelation that planetary microbes construct and maintain our biosphere. A central essay by coeditor Caroline Jones sets their work in the context of larger discussions around symbiosis; additional essays, an edited roundtable discussion, and selected excerpts follow. Contributors explore, among other things, the resilient ecological knowledge of indigenous scholars and artists, and “biofiction,” a term coined by Jones to describe the work of such theoretical biologists as Jacob von Uexküll as well as the witty parafictions of artist Anicka Yi. A playful glossary puts scientific terms in conversation with cultural ones.

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