If Reading Rainbow’s opening sequence — the Y2K-techno-optimistic Chaka Khan version, to be exact — were a real place, it would be the outdoor zine tent at the New York Art Book Fair. I delight in never quite knowing what to expect from the annual gathering organized by Printed Matter, and this year was no different: Over 300 exhibitors from across the world come together at MoMA PS1 in Queens to form a giant, chimeric bookstore of sorts that feels unmistakably alive.
On opening night of the fair’s 20th anniversary edition, which runs through the weekend, staffers handed us plastic string-closure folders, complete with lenticular Tweety Bird prints, for storing the many zines, flyers, and uncategorizable artworks we’d encounter inside. Across from artist Precious Okoyomon’s sculpture in the courtyard, the zine tent felt like a pocket-sized universe where marginalia is the text, and the overlooked, subversive, and playful currents of politics and queer culture flow freely.
Exhibit A: Art workers Jenna Hamed, Aya Krisht, and Rhonda Khalifeh of the Book Arts Solidarity Network handed out flyers for a publishers’ meet-up after the fair, a space for connection beyond the museum’s walls. The organization first formed as a way to challenge book institutions’ silence on the genocide in Palestine, and is now launching its third annual edition of the MAKEREADY publication. For the risograph-printed booklet, they collected paintings, photographs, and written reflections from four artists in Gaza and South Lebanon, soon realizing that one thread connected all the works: the color yellow. Hamed explained that the process of assembling the poetic publication was “cathartic,” a way to process an era of bald imperialism and dispossession by centering the artists who are witnessing it.
“It really came out of skill,” Hamed said of the organization’s ability to collaborate across borders. “We know what we’re doing.”
