Exhibition Catalogues and Anthologies
"Shades of Blue: Alia Ali’s INDIGO - Vision and Opacity” in alia ali . . . one of many
Published by Hatje Cantz, 2025
An essay originally written for Alia Ali: Flux (Galerie Peter Sillem, 2021) is re-printed for the artist’s major monograph published by Hatje Cantz. Rather than a monograph, a drawing of one, Alia Ali presents with this book a multi-graph, a drawing of many. Ali deconstructs artificial binaries to examine inherited political narratives—diaspora, identity, borders—through the lens of photography, language, textile, and architectural installations. A map of patterns emerges, interwoven with artist statements, research images, exchanges with collaborators, and fragments of her journals. Words and images draw us simultaneously into the micro musings of the artist’s mind and zoom out to a macro reflection of the global and communal nature of the artist’s practice. Ali’s multi-graph is a textural experience in which each page is folded upon itself, leaving one wondering at what is invisible in plain sight.
This extraordinary book also impresses with its special form of Japanese binding.
Contributions by Alia Ali, Allison Young, and Zan Zeller.
ISBN: 978-3-7757-5945-8
More information here.
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"A Reunion of Form" in Remy Jungerman: Tracing the Lines
Published by Jap Sam Books, 2024
An enlightening look inside the work of celebrated artist Remy Jungerman traces how the patterns and shapes seen in twentieth-century Maroon shoulder capes from Suriname as well as the quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have influenced his recent body of work. A journey through time, memory and culture, Tracing the Lines also tells the larger story of how geometric patterns from West Africa made their way across the ocean to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade.
Contributions by Allison K. Young, Tammi Lawson, Sally and Richard Price.
ISBN: 978-94-93329-26-3
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Contributor to Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art
Published by Phaidon, 2024
Essays: Tracey Emin; Lise Harlev; Hank Willis Thomas; Imants Tillers; and Rikrit Tiravanija
A ground-breaking global survey of today’s most innovative artists working with text. The inclusion of text in works of art was a revolutionary creative advancement of the twentieth century, with artists subverting traditional conceptions of ‘art’ and ‘writing.’ Younger generations of artists have continued to use the inherent readability of words to communicate ideas to viewers across a diverse array of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, and video.
Nominated by 66 leading global experts (including curators, critics, museum directors, and professors), Vitamin Txt showcases 103 living artists, from 34 countries, who place the use of text centrally within their artistic practices. With more the 500 artworks illustrated, and an introduction about the history of artists using text from ancient Chinese calligraphy to contemporary digital art, the book’s focus allows for a showcase of a range of different mediums, providing a cross-disciplinary view into the art world today.
ISBN: 9781838665463
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“Echoes and Erasures: Zarina Bhimji’s Art of Traces” in the exhibition catalogue for Zarina Bhimji: Flagging it Up
Published by Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2023
This major publication spans Bhimji’s career from She Loved to Breathe – Pure Silence (1987), a photo-text installation that explores politics, voice, beauty and love as forms of resistance to her most recent work, a new film, Blind Spot (2023). Also lavishly illustrated is Bhimji’s first film, Out of Blue (2002), an allusive exploration of the extermination and erasure of particular groups by a state; and Waiting (2007), an atmospheric wander around a stilled factory that processed sisal into twine. Bhimji is motivated by art’s ability to re-make experience in the mind of the viewer: ‘if I can’t make an object that describes a dusty room so someone else understands what it feels like to be in that room, then I’ve failed’. She wants to move people, and to tap into a way of thinking that is not embedded in words. With an essay by Allison K Young looking at he decades-wide arc of Bhimji’s practice which also saw monumental shifts in the art world that received it. It also includes a conversation between Zarina Bhimji and novelist Kamila Shamsie which moves from childhood recollections to the poetry, music and cultural inflences on Bhimjis work and the research behind it.
ISBN: 978-1-908612-70-0
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“Resistance and Reclamation” in Nic[o] Brierre Aziz: I’d Rather Get Out Of Jail Than Get $1,000,000
Published by Antenna, New Orleans, 2023
A companion book to Nic[o] Brierre Aziz’s first solo exhibition, “I’d Rather Get Out Of Jail Than Get $1,000,000”, features an array of works which relate to his inquiry of Blackness as a construct, experience and a colonial-capitalist tool. The exhibition’s title, which is pulled from a phrase written by Basquiat in his personal notebooks numerous times during his life, additionally illuminates Aziz’s personal experiences and perpetual questioning of “value” along with his conflicts and fears of falling in deeper love with something that is such a beautiful dark twisted fantasy. This book include essays by Allison Young and Renee Royale, interview with Nic by Mandy Ortiz, as well as tributes and commentary from his extended family.
Nic Brierre Aziz is a Haitian-New Orleanian interdisciplinary artist and curator born and raised in New Orleans, LA. His current practice is deeply community focused and rooted around the utilization of personal and collective histories to reimagine the future. In addition to his personal artistic practice, he currently serves as the Community Engagement Curator for the New Orleans Museum of Art. He has contributed to publications such as HuffPost, Burnaway, and AFROPUNK and his work has been featured by The Oxford American, The Associated Press and The Alternative UK. He has been a recipient of several notable artist residencies and fellowships and most recently was selected as a 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellow and a 2021 Joan Mitchell Center Artist-in-Residence. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehouse College and a Master of Science degree from The University of Manchester (UK).
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Contributor to Great
Published by Phaidon, 2022
Essays: Farah Atassi; Nadia Ayari; Nathalie Du Pasquier; Nicole Eisenman; Sandra Gamarra; Cui Jie; Joyce Kozloff; Wangari Mathenge; Dóra Maurer; Cassie Namoda; Gazbia Sirry; Jaune Quick-to-See Smith; Sophie Tauber Arp; Alma Thomas; Robin F. Williams; Chloe Wise; Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Great
ISBN: 9781838663285
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“Shades of Blue: Alia Ali’s INDIGO - Vision and Opacity” in Alia Ali: Flux
Published by Galerie Peter Sillem, Frankfurt, DE, 2021
Click here to read the essay.
More information here.
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Contributor to African Artists: 1882 to Now
Published by Phaidon, 2022
Essays: Owusu-Ankomah; Ahmed Basiony; Gugulective; Uzo Egonu; Kiluanji Kia Henda; David Koloane; Marcia Kure; Thami Mnyele; Nnenna Okore
António Olé; Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi; Yinka Shonibare MBE
Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available. Features the work of more than 300 artists, including El Anatsui, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Lubaina Himid, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, and Robin Rhode, as well as lesser-known names from across Africa, with stunning and surprising examples of their art paired with insightful texts that demonstrate their contribution to the painting, sculpture, installation, photography, moving image, and performance art.
ISBN: 9781838662431
More information here.
Accolades: Art News; CNN
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Contributor to Prospect.5 - Yesterday We Said Tomorrow
Published by Rizzoli, 2021
Essays: Phoebe Boswell; Mark Bradford; Mimi Lauter
Prospect New Orleans is a citywide contemporary art triennial that was conceived in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Emphasizing collaborative partnerships and site-specificity, Prospect presents artwork by local, national, and international artists in both traditional and highly unexpected environments. In the 2021 iteration of this major exhibition, artistic directors Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi bring together 51 artists to engage New Orleans as context as they reconsider the concept of history, both global and local. Through many artistic strategies, architectural interventions, and public activations, the exhibition explores current social and political conditions that ask for a reconsideration of the past.
The accompanying catalog—a rich collection of contributions from curators, poets, artists, and cultural critics—considers several key themes that animate the ambitious artist projects: history and haunting; landscape and the natural world; performance, ritual, and the public sphere; and intimacy, life, and death.
ISBN: 978-0-8478-6867-4
More information here.
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