The Classroom
Third FloorMirrored Identities: Aesthetic Codes in a Cross-Border Context, with Camila Torres Castro and Inés Vachez Palomar
Camila Torres Castro and Inés Vachez Palomar engage in a cross-border dialogue exploring how cultural expressions—from architecture to music and film—reflect and reshape collective identity across Mexico and the United States. Drawing from her research in Latin American literature and culture, Camila examines representations of the modern nation and constructions of mestizaje in contemporary Mexico, particularly through sonic and cinematic lenses. These cultural codes resonate with the ongoing work of Analog Typologies, where Inés investigates how U.S. models of living and building—embodied in remittance architecture—transform the Mexican landscape. Together, their perspectives trace layered narratives of aspiration, belonging, and hybridity across national and aesthetic borders. Presented by Analog Typologies.
Library of Artistic Print on Demand: Post-Digital Publishing in Times of Platform Capitalism, with Annette Gilbert, Richard Kostelanetz, Michael Mandiberg, and Holly Melgard
Library of Artistic Print on Demand is a project and anthology that maps the experimental field of print-on-demand (POD) publishing at the intersection of conceptual art, digital culture, and independent print. As digital printing and online platforms like Blurb, Lulu, and Kindle Direct Publishing have transformed the publishing landscape—eliminating financial barriers and enabling immediate circulation—a global subculture of artists, writers, and publishers has emerged. These practitioners explore new economies, publics, and forms of authorship while critically negotiating the contradictions of our digital present. POD has opened up space beyond the classical book market. At the same time and on a fundamental level, this new scope of publishing is contingent on the specifications and interests of these corporate platforms. This new publication brings together international contributions that trace the history, aesthetics, and political relevance of this evolving terrain, offering a first comprehensive look at the global spread and impact of artistic POD publishing. Presented by Spector Books.
Legal Structures for Creative Entrepreneurs: A Legal Workshop, with A Thousand Forests
A Thousand Forests will host an interactive workshop that dives into Legal Structures for Creatives, a 27-page zine that guides artists and publishers through a range of resources available to support their businesses and practices. Moderated by Jennifer Arceneaux of Emerson Collective, the session will open with an overview of legal structures—from LLCs and corporations to charitable and hybrid models—led by Emerson Collective’s Christy Brook, General Counsel, and Scott Exner, Counsel. The workshop will conclude with a panel discussion featuring New York-based creative entrepreneurs: Dario Calmese, founder of The Institute of Black Imagination; creative director and stylist Marcus Correa; and media artist and computer programmer Roopa Vasudevan, sharing insights from their own journeys. Presented by Emerson Collective’s A Thousand Forests.
Alienation by Design: Language, Power, and the Politics of Space, with Germán Pallares Avitia, Naomi Nakazato, and Mahdi Sabbagh
This panel explores how language and design intersect to enact and legitimize violence across borders, cities, and subjectivities. As part of Amalgam—a journal that explores the intersection of language, typography, and power—the conversation brings together architect and scholar Germán Pallares Avitia; writer, architect and urbanist Mahdi Sabbagh; and multidisciplinary artist Naomi Nakazato to examine how power operates through both spatial forms and discursive frameworks. Convened by Amalgam #5 editor Pouya Ahmadi, they consider how those subjected to alienation reclaim space and voice through resistance, redefinition, and refusal. Presented by Amalgam Journal.
Radical Archives: Queer Memory in Print, with Dulcina Abreu, Luis Juárez, Lucas Ondak, and Cole Rizki
The new issue of Balam, N°11: RADICAL, explores the significance of queer archives and marks the first photography magazine in Latin America dedicated entirely to LGBTIQ+ archives, with contributions from over 30 artists and archival projects from around the world. In a time of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the rollback of rights, these archives emerge as vital tools of resistance, memory, and community-building. They challenge dominant historical narratives, reclaim agency over representation, and protect stories that have long been silenced or erased. This Classroom discussion presents images, video excerpts, and voices from the issue, offering an intimate look at how these archives are reshaping cultural history from a dissident perspective. The panel honors the radical act of documenting queer lives and seeks to inspire deeper engagement with archival practices in print. Presented by Balam.
Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto, with Shuli Branson and Simon(e) van Saarloos
Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto starts with what it is not: a socio-economic argument against ageism, celebrating the ‘elderly’ as economically viable. Instead, Simon(e) van Saarloos presents a radical critique of conventional arguments against ageism, rejecting constructs of age, youth, and assumptions of their inherent qualities. To mark the release of their piercing manifesto, van Saarloos speaks with Shuli Branson about the ways in which ageism overlaps with structures of white supremacy and patriarchy, often drawing on personal experience. Through the lens of crip and queer theory, as well as anti-carceral and anti-colonial perspectives on time, this talk provocatively calls for the abolition of age-related laws and reframes commonly held understandings about age from van Saarloos’s defiant perspective. Presented by SPBH Editions.
The Detroit Printing Co-op: Black & Red & the University, with Danielle Aubert and David Reinfurt
Throughout the 1970s, Fredy and Lorraine Perlman printed all of the books from their press, Black & Red, at the Detroit Printing Co-op. Just before starting the Co-op, Fredy published the pamphlet, I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence, about his experience on the faculty at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Today, as universities face mounting pressure to repress dissent among students, faculty, and staff, the 1960s critique of the university—as a site of repression serving the interests of “the corporate-military system”—gains renewed relevance. This session expands on Danielle Aubert’s chapter on the Detroit Printing Co-op from David Reinfurt’s A *Co-* Program for Graphic Design; a collectively driven text that weaves together a multiplicity of voices to present a polyphonic approach to design history and teaching. Aubert and Reinfurt explore work from activists at the Co-op and the stakes of circulating ideas and images in print and in the classroom. Presented by Inventory Press and Danielle Aubert, who, for the 2025 NY Art Book Fair, has organized an exhibition in The Duplex highlighting the Detroit Printing Co-op.
The Stage
The courtyard of the Fair will feature a lineup of music, poetry, and performance organized in collaboration with Lydo Le of X-TRA.SERVICES. Founded in 2017 by Lydo, X-TRA.SERVICES is a label that curates a subaquatic space for extraterrestrial sound.
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Lydo, Tomas Urquieta (live)
Swaya
Falgoush, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Colby HNT
Reading Room
The Reading Room is a new incarnation of the longstanding Friendly Fire, which featured select politically-minded and social-justice oriented publishers. This new program, which debuted earlier this year at the LA Art Book Fair, proposes a set of themes as a point of entry into a closer study of select publishers at the Fair.
The 2025 NY Art Book Fair Reading Room is inspired by an exhibition on view at Printed Matter of Archivos Desviados, an ongoing queer archive project led by Juan Queiroz. The exhibition presents publications and ephemera published by members of the radical coalitions Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Third World Gay Revolution (TWGR), two groups that emerged in post-Stonewall New York, and Frente de Liberación Homosexual (FLH), Argentina’s first political action group for gay men, based in Buenos Aires.
Drawing from this historical material, the Reading Room traces some of the many lineages and legacies from this era in autonomous, grassroots publishing, namely the everlasting demands for self-determination and liberation. These interdisciplinary print histories—zines, flyers, movement newspapers, artists’ books—map the creative and militant infrastructures that queer organizers built in dialogue with broader movements for racial justice, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. In spotlighting several publishers at the Fair whose work echo these same interwoven struggles, visitors are encouraged to make connections between different geographies and generations of artist publishing practices. In a time of mounting repression against queer life, especially here in the U.S., these contemporary projects demonstrate the ways in which independent publishing continues to be a tactic of dissent and solidarity.
The NYABF 2025 Reading Room features Allied Productions/Petit Versailles, Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina, DA HOLOGRAM, Dane Press/Crisis Editions, Pinko Magazine, and Publishing is Pleasure, among others.
We invite visitors to slow down, spend time, and engage with the material you find here—ranging from newly commissioned artworks, site-specific installation, and archival material. On display are many different approaches to documenting and resisting the times we live in. In contrast to the rapid speed at which visitors move through the Fair, the Reading Room offers an alternative space to engage in close reading, critique, and reflection.
Exhibitor Projects
4N Consulate (PR 4) is an interactive exhibition that creatively reimagines the bureaucracy of travel. Everyone is treated equally and is systematically processed to receive their 4N travel document in a consulate decorated with 4N artworks. 4N Consulate is a project by Special Special and 4N, a community magazine telling stories of creative migration and showcasing extraordinary foreign talent in America. Our consulate will get you that visa and make you feel confident and inspired for your future foreign travels.
Boo-Hooray (PR 3) presents an archival exhibition of ephemera from Les Petites Bon Bons—a group of artists whose collective artistic practice marked an important era in queer identity, activism, outrageousness, and artistic pyrotechnics! Originating in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1970s, Les Petites Bon Bons made glitter mail art, situationist pranks, performances, and much more, with contributions from a range of stars of the era like David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Buckminster Fuller, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Led Zeppelin, Pet Shop Boys, among others.
Bread & Puppet Press (PR 1) presents We Who Are Not Dead Yet, an installation of protest prints that link the anguish of Mattias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-1516) to the violence of empire. At its center are Isenheim Studies—64 masonite prints carved by Bread & Puppet co-founder Peter Schumann in 1962, paired with his 2024 text written in response to the Gaza genocide. These works echo Grünewald’s depiction of bodily pain, sacred suffering, and collective grief, reframed for the age of drone warfare and state-sponsored annihilation. Surrounding them are large red, green, and black banners of poppies printed in 2025 for Bread & Puppet’s Domestic Resurrection Revolution In Progress Circus—symbols of mourning and solidarity with Palestine. Archival anti-war banners from the 1960s complete a visual liturgy of grief, protest, and resilience. A limited edition set of books from the Isenheim Studies series—eight accordion-fold volumes housed in a slipcase—will be launched at the fair and available for the first time.
On the occasion of the release of the book Design as Programmed Art, by David Reinfurt, Corraini Edizioni (I7) presents an exhibition that explores Bruno Munari’s work where design is conceived through the principles of programmed art—from typography to layout to the use of color. The exhibition presents a series of book covers created for publishers Einaudi and Bompiani between the 1960s and 1970s. These examples illustrate how Munari integrated systematic, often generative approaches into graphic design. Presented in collaboration with Inventory Press, Jannelli&Volpi, Esperia and Spazio Munari.
Hat & Beard Press (E8) presents an exhibition of photographic works by the artist Jun Fujita, whose first full-length monograph will launch at the Fair. Fujita was a pioneering photojournalist and poet in Chicago whose work documented major historical moments in the early part of 20th Century, including the Eastland Disaster, the 1919 Race Riots, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Despite facing racial prejudice and language barriers, Fujita became a celebrated, somewhat swashbuckling figure in Chicago’s segregated society. His personal story—marked by resilience, artistic innovation, and cultural complexity—offers a unique window into American history.
The Detroit Printing Co-op (PR 2) was a site of creative and radical production and experimentation in printing and collective labor. This project space tells the story of this history through ephemera, installation, and archival materials. In the 1970s a group of activists anchored by Fredy and Lorraine Perlman, of Black & Red Press, set up a print shop in southwest Detroit where they produced tens of thousands of copies of books, flyers, posters, and pamphlets. For a decade, The Co-op was open to anyone willing to maintain and work with the machines. Groups ranging from students, to auto workers from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, to poets and artists came together to produce print ephemera to sustain their movements. This presentation is organized by Danielle Aubert with support from Inventory Press.
Scores is a project space presentation by Three Star Books (PR 5) featuring BlackMass Publishing, Gerard & Kelly, and Raffaella della Olga. BlackMass Publishing arranges abstract graphic elements into a visual structure that echoes the spontaneity of free jazz. Gerard & Kelly begin with texts, photographs, and forms, crafting a score to be danced and interpreted. Raffaella della Olga shapes silent signals through light, rhythm, and repetition. Print becomes pulse, typography becomes breath, and text becomes choreography. Each score opens a space where bodies, voices, and silences echo across the paper.
Offsite Programs
Afuera! Publishing Queer Liberation — From the Collection of Archivos Desviados
Printed Matter, 231 11th Avenue, Manhattan, NY 10001
Printed Matter presents Afuera! Publishing Queer Liberation — From the Collection of Archivos Desviados, an exhibition of historical publications and print ephemera published by members of three activist coalitions: the Gay Liberation Front of New York (GLF) and the Third World Gay Revolution (TWGR), two groups that emerged in post-Stonewall New York, as well as the Frente de Liberación Homosexual of Argentina (FLH), Latin America’s first political action group for gays and lesbians, founded in Buenos Aires in 1971. Across a survey of rare magazines, newsletters, posters, flyers, mockups, and original documents, the exhibition traces underrecognized influences and connections between the groups as they energetically published their messages of queer liberation. Works on view are drawn from Archivos Desviados, an ongoing queer archive project led by Juan Queiroz, and marks the first US presentation of materials from the Buenos Aires-originated collection.
Yours 2ly: a year of correspondence and co-authorship
Printed Matter, 231 11th Avenue, Manhattan, NY 10001
The window of Printed Matter’s Chelsea store features a new installation of 2ly, a one-year-long epistolary correspondence between artist duos SM Studio (London) and Florian∞Emden (Leipzig). Initiated in February 2024, each month, one pair wrote and designed a letter that was riso-printed and distributed by Colorama (Berlin), then sent to the other duo and their cohort of mail-art subscribers. Publishing, here, is understood as a shared authorship in every sense. The letters explore a mutual love of writing, drawing, folding and borrowing. They began with this quote: “Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy.” The installation by the creators of 2ly presents the shared visual language that developed over their correspondence.