How to Reappear: Through the quivering leaves of independent publishing

Curated by Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis

What is deemed publishable shapes our cultural landscape, but only partially reflects it. From the margins, independent publishing initiatives tend to the dismissed or underrepresented, those that are denied the public space of publication or desire it on different terms.

Beyond artist books, artists have taken on publishing as an artistic practice – thinking of publishing as a way of production, unsettling role divisions, and breaking down the lines between authorship and publishing.

The works in this exhibition share a rich variety of historical and contemporary reflections on the languages and formats marginalized in the dominant publishing industry – the snubbed genres, the outlawed subjects, the troubling subjectivities, the excessive, the minimal, the unprofitable, and the unfathomable.

How to Reappear brings questions on power, access, and rights to the fore and explores the efforts to reclaim the agency to publish, focusing on publications that maneuver around restrictive publishing regimes.