Publishing Practices and Disparate Design: Transcending and Transforming the Book with African (Cont)texts
Publishing Practices and Disparate Design: Transcending and Transforming the Book with African (Con)texts, a talk organized as part of The Classroom at the New York Art Book Fair, on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
Artist and curator Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, curator and cultural organizers Kennedy Jones and Gee Wesley, and artist and designer Nontsikelelo Mutiti discuss publishing as an alternative space for curatorial, editorial, and artistic discourse within the context of Black and African cultural production. This conversation explores how narrative formations from across the continent and the diaspora beckon us to think differently about publishing as it relates to translation, production, dissemination, and genre, and about how libraries and archives can create spaces of resistance, refuge, and channels for histories that center erased narratives. The conversation highlights two recent publications: eBhish' (Archive Books) and Where Is Africa (CARA). eBhish' is a multilingual and multi-genre response to Nyawose's photographic meditations on Black social life, leisure, and public communion under siege. Where Is Africa, edited by Emanuel Admassu and Anita N. Bateman, and designed by NMutiti Studio, is a set of exchanges with contemporary artists, curators, designers, and academics actively engaged in representing the continent—both within and outside its geographic boundaries. Presented by Archive Books and Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA).
