The Classroom
Third FloorAfuera! Publishing Queer Liberation, with Mariano López Seoane, Germán Garrido and Jorge Luis Giacosa
On the occasion of the exhibition Afuera! Publishing Queer Liberation — From the Collection of Archivos Desviados, currently on view at Printed Matter (231 11th Ave), this conversation will explore the transnational networks of queer communities that arose through the work of three activist coalitions from the 1970s: the Gay Liberation Front of New York (GLF), the Third World Gay Revolution (TWGR), and the Frente de Liberación Homosexual of Argentina (FLH). Scholars Mariano López Seoane and Germán Garrido will speak about their research involving these groups’ publications, documents, posters, and ephemera held within Archivos Desviados, a queer archive project founded and led by Juan Queiroz. They will be joined by Jorge Luis Giacosa of the FLH, Latin America's first political action group for gays and lesbians, who will share his experience as an activist in this pioneering organization. Presented by Printed Matter, Inc.
Wish This Was Real, with Tyler Mitchell and Drew Sawyer
Photographer Tyler Mitchell is joined by art historian and curator Drew Sawyer for a conversation celebrating the release of Wish This Was Real (Aperture, 2025). Mitchell’s definitive early-career survey is animated by dreams of paradise and joy against the backdrop of history. Since establishing himself in the fields of art and fashion, Mitchell has created images of beauty, utopia, and the American landscape that expand the imaginary of Blackness in the twenty-first century. Presenting new perspectives by leading writers on his long-standing themes of self-determination and the extraordinary radiance of the everyday, Wish This Was Real shows how photography can be rooted in a collective past while evoking imagined futures. Presented by Aperture.
Archiving History, with Anu Ambasna and Jordan Taylor
This program presents research and materials from several archives, including PageMasters and MayDay Rooms, focusing on radical publications such as Crowbar, Shocking Pink, The Black Lesbian Group, Shakti Khabar, and more. These DIY zines, newsletters, and printed matter emerged from anti-racist, feminist, queer, and anti-capitalist movements in the 1970s to present day, offering vital platforms for political organizing, cultural expression, and autonomous publishing. Through archival material and discussion, the discussion traces the continuity between past and present zine cultures in London. We explore how the political urgency and self-organized spirit of earlier publications resonate in contemporary DIY publishing, particularly among queer and marginalized communities. Presented by CAMP! Books and PageMasters.
Asian Revolutionaries and Asian-American Conservatives, with Matthew Shen Goodman and Minh Nguyen
Critic and curator Minh Nguyen joins writer and The Baffler editor-in-chief Matthew Shen Goodman for a discussion on Asian politics across borders and how Asian revolutionary legacies shape diaspora politics in unexpected ways. Occasioned by the release of Nguyen’s essay collection Memorial Park, which examines the afterlife of the Vietnamese revolution—both within the country and among Vietnamese Americans, one of the most conservative Asian diaspora groups—the conversation bridges to Shen Goodman’s recent writing and book-in-progress on the roots of right-wing Asian American movements. Together they consider the usefulness of “Asian American” as an analytical framework, and how art and cultural criticism offer approaches to understanding the political realities of place. Presented by Wendy’s Subway and Art Metropole.
Beneath The Surface: Deep Listening, Buried Narratives, and Embodied Resistance, with Luïza Luz
In a world where both noise and silence perpetuate cycles of oppression and ecological destruction, Beneath the Surface: Deep Listening, Buried Narratives, and Embodied Resistance, invites us to pause, listen deeply, and reclaim the stories that have been buried or ignored. In this public program, Brazilian transdisciplinary artist, lecturer, and author Luïza Luz shares readings from their new work, which weaves together personal reflection, collective narratives, and theoretical inquiry. Centering deep listening as both a method and a practice of resistance, the text explores how academic and cultural institutions often reproduce selective histories, and how embodied knowledge can offer pathways toward emancipation. Co-published by Archive Books and We make it, and featuring contributions by Ahmet Öğüt and Jamila Barakat, Beneath the Surface opens a conversation around education, memory, and the radical potential of the collective. This program offers an opportunity to engage with Luïza Luz’s intersectional approach to environmentalism, pedagogy, and voice—foregrounding listening as an essential tool for imagination. Presented by Gloria Glitzer and We make it.
Gathering in Practice, with Joshua Duttweiler, Prem Krishnamurthy, Vera van de Seyp, and ULISES
This panel explores how to design more intentional, imaginative, and responsive forms of gathering, drawing from A Toolkit for Gathering—a new publication from Draw Down Books that offers prompts, exercises, and strategies for rethinking how people come together. The book serves as both a practical guide and poetic invitation, encouraging artists, designers, educators, and organizers to reimagine conventional formats. Building on these ideas, the panel shares adaptable tools and strategies that challenge default assumptions about space, time, roles, and structure, inviting the audience into a dialogue about what thoughtful convening can make possible. This program brings together Joshua Duttweiler (Riso-Rama), Prem Krishnamurthy (Department of Transportation), Vera van de Seyp (ITERATIONS), and ULISES. Moderated by Kathleen and Christopher Sleboda. Presented by Draw Down Books.
a sound answers a sound (slight return)
This session revisits the eponymous early September performance and subsequent chapbook, a sound answers a sound, which debuted in São Paolo and gathers the scores and sonic practices of Ryan C. Clarke, JJJJJerome Ellis, and Kite. This slight return takes the form of a mixtape-like gathering: not a repetition, but an echo with variation, a riff that returns altered by time and context. Phone recordings, music tracks, and audio fragments from the making of a sound answers a sound resurface as traces of process and memory. Alongside these archival elements, poet contributors to the chapbook will read their work live, offering new points of entry into the project’s polyphonic terrain. This program foregrounds the broader constellation of writers and artists whose practices explore memory, place, and embodied listening. Together, these voices compose a resonant space for return—one that extends the project’s call to dream, remember, and move otherwise. a sound answers a sound is CARA’s contribution to Conjugations, the opening program of the 36th São Paulo Biennial, Not All Travelers Walk Roads. Presented by the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA).
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.
ISAbella b2b Laurel Halo
Max Buzone
Silas (live with band)
Lonefront
Joy Guidry
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.