Opening Night
7–10 PMThe official kick-off event of NYABF 2025 and first opportunity to visit the Fair and support this non-profit production! The celebratory evening will feature live music performances including a DJ set by Lydo, an experimental interlude by Sydney Spann, and a post-punk crescendo by voyeur.
The first 500 ticketed visitors to Opening Night will receive a limited edition artwork by Lyric Shen. Opening Night tickets also include unlimited re-entry throughout the Fair weekend.
Lydo
As a resident DJ of BASEMENT NY, Lydo’s distinctive sets explode the parameters of techno, deftly cutting across genres while retaining a highly personal emotional resonance. A non-binary trans artist themselves, Lydo launched X-TRA.SERVICES to serve and create space for queer, trans, and nonbinary people of color.
Sydney Spann
Sydney Spann, originally from Baltimore, MD, is a musician based in New York. They work with synthesis, electronics, voice, and amateur acoustic instrumentation to make studio compositions and live performances. Lately their work sublimates the latent aggressions of feminized labor into anxious and beautiful music. Previous releases include full length albums for Recital and Reading Group.
voyeur
voyeur is a new york city based quartet made up of Jake Lazovick, Sharleen Chidiac, Isaac Eiger, and Max Freedberg, in 2024 they released their first two EPs “Ugly” and “Something Becomes You” and in 2025 voyeur released a split 7” record with untitled (halo) and their new album, “The Burden of Desire” comes out on November 5th.
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. A satellite exhibition of experimental films by Bruno Munari and student works from his Harvard courses on Design and Visual Communication is simultaneously presented by Inventory Press (I6). 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.
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.
Signings & Launches
T17 Allied Productions/Le Petit Versailles
Signing and launch of TBD by Peter Cramer, and IN/OUT by Jack Waters.
K4 Blurring Books
Launch of Trip Advisor, by Ryan McGinness.
L5 Colorama
Launch of A Place is the Space where the Body is, by Sophie Florian.
T33 ¡AGITPOP! Press
Launch of COLLATERAL TAROT.
K4 Blurring Books
Signing of PUBLIC IMAGE LIBRARY: NYC Restaurant Ads 1981-1998, with Niki Igol.
R3 Départ Pour l'Image
Signing of Mise en Abyme, by Yelena Yemchuk.
T2 Independent Paper Consortium
Signing and launch of he of Righteousness, by Gregory Green.
F6 Kodoji Press
Launch of Dancing on the Fault Line, by Nick Haymes.
T70 Kurt Boone Books
Signing of Good News From Haiti and Know Justice Know Peace, by Bob Gore.
Offsite Programs
Afuera! Publishing Queer Liberation — From the Collection of Archivos Desviados
Printed Matter, 231 11th Avenue
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
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.
Barbara Kruger: Your property is a rumor of power
Harper’s Books, 504 West 22nd Street
As entry into an exploration of Pictures Generation artists, Harper’s Books is pleased to announce a presentation of six original paste-ups from Barbara Kruger; a dynamic range of her 1980s compositions, from iconic (Surveillance is their busywork) to obscure (You are the long complaint of desire). These collage works provide an intimate glimpse into Kruger’s artistic methodology—developed during her time as designer for both Mademoiselle magazine and leftist book publisher Schocken—with these word/image syntheses serving as the foundation for her multimedia “picture practice,” transformed into large-format gelatin silver prints, billboards, subway posters, postcards, matchbooks, stickers etc. Also on display: one of the resulting photomontage works (Your property is a rumor of power), in its iconic red-painted frame, along with a rotating selection of related catalogues, artist’s books, and ephemera. On view at our Chelsea bookshop (504 West 22nd Street); a few streets south of Printed Matter, Inc.