“We all have dreams, we all have stories: an exhibit of African American Artists’ Books”

This selection of artists’ books explores some of the complex and varied stories from the African American experience. Most of the books are by African American artists; all address the legacies of slavery, segregation, and institutional racism. The books also revisit and re-imagine American history, identities forged from generations of memories “spoken and unspoken,” and the familial bonds that, like squares of a quilt, are pieced together, the sum greater than the parts.

Combining narrative storytelling with the poetics of the object, the artists’ book is uniquely equipped for reckoning with complex material. The artists presented here utilize a multitude of forms, including conceptual photography; children’s books; hand-made and woven paper; a unique painted graffiti board book; and the simulacra of objects like the cotton plant of the postage stamp.

However, artists’ books are also a genre historically monopolized by a monochromatic section of the cultural elite. Though she was referencing the overarching contemporary art world, Faith Ringgold’s 1973 assessment that “No other field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts,” has also proved true in the sphere of artists’ books. This is slowly changing, as evidenced by the increasing variety and number of artists’ books documenting, reframing, and providing voice to African American stories.

Legendary book artist Clarissa Sligh inspired the title and motif of this exhibition. “We all have dreams, we all have stories,” is a line excerpted from her book Reading Dick and Jane with Me (1989), in which Black children question why their images and experiences have been excluded from the ubiquitous learning primers that supposedly defined the typical American childhood.

The image of the paper crane is excerpted from Sligh’s 2016 work: Transforming Hate, in which the artist meditates on the destructiveness of hate and the process by which it might be metamorphosed. The artist finds an answer in part through folding origami cranes from pages of white supremacist books, thereby transforming hate into art. It is a profoundly powerful–and simple–gesture.

Spring/summer 2023

Curated by LIS 855: Art Librarianship: Heidi Bechler, Britt Beermann, Maddie Hayko, Raichelle Johnshon, Madison Klutts, Claire Lamoureux, Mare Lodu, Margaret Murphy, Linnea Quimby, Bonnie Steward, and Ruth Thomas.