We Do What We Have to Do:
Printed Matter's Awards for Artists 2009
Exhibition
On view September 12 through October 10, 2009
Awards for Artists was adjudicated through a peer group process: Printed Matter invited twenty artists to nominate up to five artists each for the award. From the 63 finalists, a jury of three artists—Geoff Hendricks, Robin Kahn, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya—chose the following ten artists to receive an award of $2,500 each:
Osa Atoe (New Orleans, LA)
Heather Benjamin (Providence, RI)
Nicholas Dumit Estevez (Bronx, NY)
Edie Fake (Baltimore, MD)
Eve Fowler (Los Angeles, CA)
Chitra Ganesh (Brooklyn, NY)
K8 Hardy (Brooklyn, NY)
Arnold Kemp (Portland, OR)
Julio Cesar Morales (San Francisco, CA)
Carlo Quispe (New York, NY)
For this exhibition, the artists present works in a diverse range of mostly low-cost media: zines, pamphlets, posters, and photographs, as well as an assemblage (by K8 Hardy), and textile objects (by Arnold Kemp).
Heather Benjamin exhibits her sought-after zines, including the just-completed Sad Sex #3, but also surprises us with a series of small watercolor drawings. Nicholas Dumit Estevez presents a performative series of photographs, featuring himself as The Holy Infant of Prague, as well as a new title Induced Labor. Edie Fake is well known to Printed Matter fans for her exceptional zines, such as Rico McTaco, and Gaylord Phoenix which are both included here. Eve Fowler presents a photographic sequence, in collaboration with Math Bass, that you are not likely to forget, together with her popular newsprint publications. Her new titles Gloria Hole and and and I don’t care. and I do care are included here.
Chitra Ganesh presents a vitrine of ephemera designed by the artist, together with a faux Indian movie poster with a pertinent message. K8 Hardy brings us a series of large-format double-sided posters, together with performance props from her new zine FashionFashion Bashin’. Arnold Kemp features hoods based on those of the Ku Klux Klan, constructed from traditional African textiles, together with self-portraits modeling the hoods. Carlo Quispe presents the new issue of his Killer Heights zine, together with original dummies of his previous zines. Julio Cesar Morales investigates an early instance of Latin American fusion music in his audio project, Dilo!, which samples bandleader Perez Prado's compositions that mix afro-Cuban rhythms with swing.
The exhibition as a whole, although drawn from artists of diverse backgrounds from around the country, has a surprising consistency. Themes of social injustice—including sexism, racism, white supremacy, and homophobia—are cut and pasted into a vision of a do-it-yourself world where identity and sexuality take free form, and artists collaborate in knitting together real communities that transgress corporate culture.
For more information please contact AA Bronson at aabronson @ printedmatter.org.
Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists' books and other artists' publications.
Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Altria Group Inc, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Schoenstadt Family Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.