Artists' Book Blog - Artists' Books - LibGuides at Emily Carr University of Art & Design

Reading List. by Charisma Christal

by Anonymous on 2019-11-03T00:32:00-07:00 in Artists' Books, Illustration, Photography | 0 Comments

Take a look at how these different artists understand the world around us through these five incredible books.

I suggest starting with Red Poems of Rain and Voice by Baco Ohama, who explores cultural identity and how we navigate different societies. Her poetry sets the stage for the books that follow.

Next, take some time to explore how navigation takes center stage through Where You Are. Through a collaborative collection of books in a box, different artists show how they move through the world with things other than directions. It is " a book of maps that will leave you completely lost" in all the best ways.

Now, as this journey takes you on a path less traveled, stop by Vancouver through A Sign for the City. Artists' Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber document this public art project where, at the daily blast of Vancouver's Nine O'clock Gun, they reassign a meaning to that day with important days of history. "The project acoustically memorializes the culture and politics that ground this history, towards imagining Vancouver as a socially and spatially just city." (1). Each page correspondence to a date, a few of which also harks back to Ohama's history of growing up Japanese in Canadian society and the perspective of her history and needs a platform to be told.

As we move from the cannon blasts in Stanley Park, we read About Trees by Katie Holten. Holten reimagines how we understand language and our relationship to nature through a new typography using trees as a font. She uses these fonts alongside significant writings on environmentalism throughout history. Her work bridges the gap between the natural world and the made.

Finish the reading list with Shelter by Henk Wildschut, a book that photographs what happens when one's cultural identity and place of origin dictate how we are seen and accepted. Wildschut documents temporary homes that refugees build throughout Europe as they navigate their way to Paris and London, a place with a promise of a new start. Their shelter becomes their maps and the trees they are forced to hide behind, their city. Shelter ends as a point of contemplation for the reading list. It allows us to examine how we understand the world around us and where we want to go as a society.