Unbound: African-American Artists’ Books & Illustrated Children’s Books

November 5 – December 31, 2010

This exhibition is presented by the Department of Afro-American Studies in commemoration of its 40th anniversary and as a celebration of the 2010-11 Year of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Unbound is an exhibition of African-American artists’ books and children’s books selected from the Kohler Art Library collection. The artists’ books are organized into four categories: Ancestry, Biography, Memory/Trauma, and Resistance–to situate the voices of the artists in imagined locations from which they address the reader. The children’s books, similarly, capture memory and imagination, overlapping and expanding these fluid themes on aspects of life. Though the books vary in texts, images, processes, shapes, materials, aesthetics, and modes of communiation, they represent the agency of the artist in a metaphorical practice of becoming unbound.

Exhibit opening reception: November 5, 5:30-7:30pm.

Image:  Tyanna Buie.  Unbound (poster).