SHIRIN NESHAT -Rebellious Silence (1994)Black and white RC print and ink, 27.9 x 35.6 cm.
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York.
The current issue of ArtAsiaPacific features an in depth look at artists who employ text in their work.
Articles include:
-A great piece on contemporary calligraphy in China, “Square Words, Round Paradigms” by Eric Wear.
-A look at Yoko Ono’s embrace of online communities (Ono averages 200 new ‘friends’ on MySpace a day) by HG Masters.
-Gregory Galligan’s looks at Islamic text-based art in his piece, “Architecture in Script: From Without Boundaries to Archive Fever,” and includes Shirin Neshat whose iconic work appears above.
Also in this issue is Eliza Gluckman’s profile of Sharmini Pereira and her publishing imprint, Raking Leaves, which focuses exclusively on artists using the printed book as the medium.
It is refreshing to see how widespread the use of language, and the book for that matter, is in contemporary art. These new avenues of textual consumption expand the boundaries of reading and offer us fresh ways to make sense of the world.
Related: previous Book Patrol post : “The Book Gods of Contemporary Chinese Art”