The Classroom
Third FloorFifty Years and Counting ..., with Connie Butler, Lesley A. Martin, and Legacy Russell
Printed Matter’s Executive Director, Lesley A. Martin and Connie Butler, The Agnes Gund Director of MoMA PS1, to talk through challenges, reflections, best practices, and what it means to run an arts organization that reaches this pivotal milestone. Presented by Printed Matter.
Positions, with K8 Hardy and A.L. Steiner
Multimedia artist K8 Hardy uses photography in her Position Series (2007–12) to explore identity as performance. This new publication, Positions, brings together the entirety of her photographic series to mark its twentieth anniversary, cataloguing Hardy’s oeuvre in the context of the DIY fashion, art, and queer subcultures of early 2000s New York. Across the series, Hardy uses herself, her sister, and mannequins, styled in eclectic clothes, wigs, and makeup, to suggest personas outside normative categorizations of identity and gender expression, in tension with the ordinary domestic or urban spaces in which they are pictured. In the darkroom, Hardy superimposes bows, glasses, bras, and the spectral outlines of bodies over these portraits: analogue interventions that expose the photograph as a deliberate construction rather than fixed truth. Her work queers the conventions of the portraiture genre in an iconic act of rebellion. Here, self-objectification serves as a powerful riposte to the objectification of the female body and to exclusionary art institutions. Hardy will be joined by A.L. Steiner in a discussion about this new publication and her photographic practice at large. Presented by MACK.
The City in Our Hands: An (Abbreviated) History of Radical Black Print Culture in NYC, with Neta Bomani and Mariame Kaba
Neta Bomani and Mariame Kaba, co-directors of Sojourners for Justice Press (SJP), tour the history of radical Black print culture in New York City, building off their co-authored essay, “The City in Our Hands” published by Urban Omnibus. Bomani and Kaba situate their press within this important lineage and offer the audience more insight into their community publishing initiatives, which range from educational programming, public gatherings, and their flagship Black Zine Fair. Across these different programs, SJP supports Black writers, artists, educators, and organizers to distribute their work outside traditional publishing systems. Presented by Sojourners for Justice Press (SJP).
How to Find a Book, with Camilo Otero and Eva Parra
In 1979, the Polish artist Henryk Gajewski invited artists around the world to make rigorous, open-minded, and non-indoctrinating artists’ books for children. Nearly 400 works arrived through the international mail art network and were stored in a blue metal trunk that traveled from Warsaw to Amsterdam to Buffalo, where it sat untouched for over forty years. This session, led by Camilo Otero and Eva Parra of Calipso Press, begins with that trunk and the question of how it was found: tracing a project that circulated widely, then vanished into storage. Along the way, Otero and Parra highlight work by Ulises Carrión, Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin, Channa Horwitz, Guillermo Deisler, and Paulo Bruscky, as well as a 1983 video in which Gajewski narrates the trunk collection in his own words. Presented by Calipso Press.
Zine* Together, with Amanda Chung, Shisi Huang, Paul John, and Claire Kim
On view at Asia Art Archive in America from September 17–March 31, Zine* Together is the first exhibition of its kind to examine Asian American zines not only as objects, but as creative, collective, and relational actions. Drawing from AAAinA’s Reading Room collection, it highlights collaboratively produced zines from 2010 to the present, tracing zine-making as a mode of shared authorship where diasporic histories and collective responses to marginalization take form. For this program, AAAinA’s Director of Programs, Collections, and Exhibitions, Claire Kim, brings together several artists and publishers whose work appears in the exhibition and who are also tabling at NYABF. Together they consider zines as a living practice: how work is made, circulated, sold, and sustained. Claire is joined by Paul John, artist and co-founder of the risograph publisher and studio Endless Editions; Shisi Huang, founder of the bookshop and art space Bungee Space and publisher of Ten Books; and Amanda Chung, graphic designer and co-founder of the risograph press lucky risograph. Presented by Asia Art Archive in America.
Politics of Sound, with AFRIKADAA and Station of Commons
How do we listen to an archive? Can sound become a form of publishing? This collective reading and listening session explores Politics of Sound, an editorial research platform developed by Afrikadaa that investigates listening as both a critical methodology and a decolonial practice of knowledge production. Led by curator and AFRIKADAA editor-in-chief Pascale Obolo, together with Station of Commons (Grégoire Rousseau, Eddie Choo Wen Yi, and Juan Fortun), the conversation unfolds through readings, sound excerpts, and shared listening. Moving beyond the printed page, the session frames publishing as a multisensory format in which books, voices, radio, sound archives, and collective memory continuously inform one another. Presented in conjunction with the NYABF 2026 Reading Room: The Pan-African Library.
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.
Ade Kassim
Acamol
Plexi
Ashe Kilbourne
Eden Aurelius
Reading Room
Listening session with AFRIKADAA and Station of Commons
A selection of archives and audio pieces produced with the AFRIKADAA collective and Radio Station of Commons as part of the African Art Book Fair.
Listening Session with Jessie Cox on Sounds of Black Switzerland: Blackness, Music, and Unthought Voices
This program expands on Jessie Cox’s latest publication, Sounds of Black Switzerland: Blackness, Music, and Unthought Voices (Duke University Press, 2025). Writing as a composer and Black Swiss scholar, Cox listens through sound to the experience of Black life in Switzerland, drawing on work by musicians such as DJ Maïté Chénière, clarinetist Jérémie Jolo, and rapper Nativ, alongside composer Charles Uzor's pieces written for George Floyd. Moving past what can be directly heard, the project confronts anti-Blackness in a nation often claimed to be race-free, reshaping how citizenship, immigration, gender, kinship, and belonging are thought in relation to Blackness. For this program Jessie Cox curated an exclusive extended playlist of music that engages with these questions in Switzerland.
Jam conversation on Candomblé: Sacred Rhythms in Brazil, with FLEE Project
Upon their arrival in Brazil after the traumatic Atlantic crossing, enslaved populations from West Africa rebuilt their sacred systems and created a resilient and evolving religion known as Candomblé. This program explores that history through Candomblé: Sacred Rhythms in Brazil, a project by FLEE Project that includes a bilingual book and a double vinyl compilation. Editors Alan Marzo and Olivier Duport will address critical questions regarding sacred sound as an archive and the ethical challenges of publishing ritual material. The listening session will feature a dialogue between archival recordings from the Ilê Axé Opô Aganjú terreiro and newly commissioned works by contemporary artists like DJ Anderson do Paraiso and Xexa. The program concludes with an open discussion that bridges historical preservation with modern artistic transformation.
About the Reading Room
The Pan-African Library, curated by Pascale Obolo, draws from the ten-year archive of the African Art Book Fair (AABF) to present various histories of independent publishing across Africa and its diasporas. This Reading Room traces how autonomous infrastructures of knowledge operate beyond institutional geographies that have historically organized visibility, legitimacy, and circulation.
We begin with the simple proposition: books never exist alone. Every publication carries with it conversations, oral traditions, friendships, political struggles, acts of translation, and communities of care. The Reading Room creates a map of these ecologies of social relations and argues that publishing is an infrastructure that enacts cultural repair and epistemic disobedience.
The installation features a curated selection of contemporary independent African titles, archives of important publications, listening stations, artwork, and importantly—space to read and rest. Alongside the 10th anniversary of the African Art Book Fair are histories of the magazine Peuples noirs, Peuples africains, founded by the Cameroonian thinker Mongo Beti; the 15th anniversary of the journal Mosaïques; a history of the Nigerian cultural center The Mbari Club; and the 5th anniversary of the double-dummy édition newspaper. NYABF exhibitors are also invited to contribute thematically relevant titles to a non-circulating library available for browsing throughout the weekend.
The daily program schedule in the Reading Room features collaborations with local and international writers, artists, and activists, including Station of Commons, iwalewabooks, the Fantastic Four Double Dutch, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, FLEE Project, We Make Books, and AFRIKADAA, among many others. This interdisciplinary format—with programming ranging from listening sessions, group discussions, and performances—emphasizes collaboration as a primary method uniting independent publishing practices. In doing so, The Pan-African Library refuses the silence traditionally associated with libraries, while contrasting the rapid pace of the Fair with an opportunity to engage in downtime, close reading, critique, and reflection.
As a partner of the Reading Room, Station of Commons, a transdisciplinary collective of artists, designers, and coders working on digital commons, will broadcast from the Fair on their own radio infrastructure at stationofcommons.org and on the Printed Matter website.
This Reading Room: The Pan-African Library is supported by Aalto University School of the Arts, Design and Architecture; Consulate General of Finland in New York; Consulate General of Switzerland in New York; Finnish Cultural Foundation; Frame Contemporary Art Finland; Goethe Institut; Silence Please; and is part of Villa Albertine post-residency program in partnership with Albertine Foundation.
Project Spaces
Dark Entries Editions (I8) Dark Entries presents Darian Newman's archive of matchbooks from gay bars and bathhouses, alongside the debut photo exhibition of William Howell documenting the final chapter of queer cruising on Manhattan's westside piers. Before mobile phones and indoor smoking bans, queer communities used matchbooks as marketing tools. These everyday disposable objects, often decorated with muscled Adonises and raunchy puns, were passed hand to hand with a phone number scrawled inside. Now, with so many of these bars and bathhouses closed and apps like Grindr in their place, these small objects have become treasured artifacts that tell a tale of subcultures and the utility of graphic design. Together these works by Newman and Howell capture an era of urban culture eventually upended by gentrification and demolition of the mid-1990s.
grama/naipe (PR 4) presents a multi-channel installation surveying sound poetry and voice works by Latin American writers and artists. Spanning nearly a century, the selection moves from Vicente Huidobro's works of the 1930s through the Brazilian concrete poetry movement and up to a range of contemporary artists from Central and South America, as well as the Latino diaspora in the United States. grama/naipe is a ghostly imprint created by artist David Medina that uses algorithmic, combinatorial, and generative techniques to produce strange and absurd books. At NYABF 2026, the imprint presents a selection of older works, new launches, and sound works edited by the grama/naipe label.
Magazzino Italian Art Museum (PR 2) presents Arte Povera: Medium and Message, a bibliographic exhibition by Magazzino Italian Art that draws from the Archival and Special Collections of its Research Center. Bringing together artist books, gallery brochures, avant-garde journals, posters, and landmark exhibition catalogues, the project traces how Arte Povera—the late-1960s Italian movement that rethought the concept of “fixed artwork” through matter, energy, language, and transformation—was shaped and circulated through print. Publications by artists, gallerists, and curators reveal the movement’s engagement with typography, graphic design, and the relationship between word and image. Together, these materials offer a parallel history of Arte Povera, showing how print served not merely to document artworks and exhibitions, but as a space for artistic and critical experimentation.
In the Duplex of MoMA PS1, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (PR 1) presents an installation that expands upon the artist’s seminal publication, I Don’t Think About Being Great: Selected Writings, and explores the vibrant artist communities and collaborative activism that emerged in New York from the 1960s to early 2000s. The exhibition centers on the ideals of peace and mutual support of artists, utilizing a rich array of primary source materials—including original writing manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and printed ephemera—to trace Rauschenberg's deep-seated commitment to the support of fellow artists, artist-led networks, and advocacy. This includes his significant efforts to secure financial rights for artists, his pivotal work in AIDS advocacy, his backing of and participation in artist collaborations, and the continued fight for arts funding and freedom of speech. On view is documentation of Rauschenberg's legacy as an interdisciplinary visionary who used collaborative philanthropy to empower artist communities, with highlights from influential collaborators and peers, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jerry Brown, Trisha Brown, William Burroughs, David Byrne, John Cage, Tina Girouard, Deborah Hay, Marion Javits, Jasper Johns, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol, and Sylvia Palacios Whitman.
Roma Publications (E8) and Martens & Martens present Cloakroom Tickets (1–250), an exhibition of printed work by Dutch graphic designer Karel Martens, marking the launch of the eponymous new publication of prints made on the pages of a booklet of numbered cloakroom tickets Martens kept in his studio for years. In 1993, Roma founder Roger Willems, then a student, began working for Martens as an assistant. Their first publishing collaboration was in 2013 with the title Full Color, and since then they have produced twenty publications, plus special editions, tote bags, T-shirts, postcards, posters, and other ephemera. Now, for the 20th anniversary of NYABF, Willems and Martens return to their archives to share a wide range of collaborations, Roma publications, and rare copies of first editions from the past 30 years of publishing.
Three Star Books (PR 5) presents four new limited-edition artists’ books by Raffaella Della Olga, Daniel Gordon, Ruby Sky Stiler, and Diego Marcon. The installation will transform the space into a meditation-like setting, with books displayed on a long table in the center and benches lining the perimeter. Visitors are invited to sit, spend time with the publications, and engage with each project in a quiet, contemplative environment.
In 1983, the art dealers Holly and Horace Solomon sent a personalized postcard to museum director and art historian Rudi Oxenaar, inviting him to the opening of their New York gallery. Fifty years later, Anniek Brattinga came across this invitation on Sanie Irsay’s desk. She shared its phrasing with Jana Sofie Liebe and Johanna Gratzer, who were looking to curate a group exhibition centered on primary source material.
In response to the increasing homogenization and anonymity of communication technologies, Werkplaats Typografie (PR 3) presents May I Request the Pleasure of Your Company—a return to the announcement as a site of encounter that reclaims the specificity of address in relation to a particular recipient. This invitation travels back to New York in several forms for the 20th NY Art Book Fair, all of which will be enacted and on view in this special project.
Signings & Launches
A46 Book Arts Solidarity Network (BASN)
Launch of MAKEREADY Vol. 3.
S6 Further Reading
Launch of How to Book in Indonesia, Design After Design, Serving Suggestion issue #03, and Double Take: In Transit.
T76 New Poetics Publishing
Launch of Effigy of Man by Jatin Gulati, and Kept Time by Kat Shannon.
A23 Shadowbanned Press
Launch of RFK Jr. As Recalled Food Zine.
T16 Simple Project NY
Launch of Burma/Myanmar Memories of War 2019−2024 by Kameyama.
A36 Ungovernable Study
Launch of Drawing our own terms: on doodles without borders in L.A. by Հայկ/Hayk Makhmuryan and Anna Cho-Son.
T8 Allied Productions / Petit Versailles
Signing of I Still Am: A Woman, Pissed-Off & Curious by Su Friedrich.
T18 Hwang Eunyoung
Launch of Familiar Sounds, a collaboration by Micah Lexier and Hwang Eunyoung.
T41 19Editions
Launch of UNHINGE by Rhea Karam.
A74 Battle Jester
Launch of Tonight We Pray For Water by Xena Brar.
J1 Center for Book Arts
Signing of Cosmographic Poetry: Book 1 — THE STARS ARE OUT! by Sok Song.
N4 Draw Down Books
Signing of Relational Citation Style Handbook by Deborah Khodanovich.
D9 Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Signing and launch of Angel Otero by Angel Otero.
B Printed Matter, Inc.
Signing of Have you heard? The art market is down by Derrick Adams.
T8 Allied Productions/Petit Versailles
Launch of Ephemera Box from Geoffrey Hendricks paper archives by Sur Rodney Sur.
D6 CANADA
Launch of Songs We Sing by Hasani Sahlehe.
I9 Dark Entries Editions
Signing of Cruising Gay Matchbooks by Darian Newman.
Q8 FLEE Project
Signing of Candomblé: Sacred Rhythms in Brazil.
PR2 Magazzino Italian Art Museum
Exhibition tour of Arte Povera: Medium and Message and Magazzino publications with Beatriz Cifuentes and Nicola Lucchi.
A24 Return to Library
Launch of Spreads 1 by Yisu Kang, Lucas Hsu, Temperance Downing, April Hoffmeister, Charis Pao, Ammie Liu, Reika Oh, CeCilia Yang, and Wendy Wang.
T53 Special Special / 4N Magazine
Alias Meet and Greet: Launch of 4N Magazine Issue 5.
PR5 Three Star Books
Presentation of DUETS and The Art Students League by Daniel Gordon and Ruby Sky Stiler.
T12 La Chancleta Voladora (The Flying Flip Flop)
Signing of Álbum El Informador - Archivo Luis Cobelo (1996–1999) by Luis Cobelo.
F5 MACK
Signing of Positions by K8 Hardy.
T52 Page Bureau / RELATED DEPARTMENT
Launch of PLATES 3: Conditions of Migration by RELATED DEPARTMENT and Copyright/Reserved.
T46 Pomegranate Press
Signing of Sweet Oxygen by Andy Jackson.
T64 ZOETROPE ATHENS
Launch and signing of Circus by Akis Detsis.
Q6 After 8 Books
Signing of Fuck Me Judith by Claire Star Finch.
J1 Center for Book Arts
Signing of Chütaügà (Sonidos de la noche) by Tatiana Arocha.
D8 David Zwirner Books
Launch and signing of Joe Bradley: Vom Abend/Animal Family by Joe Bradley.
E3 KWY Ediciones
Signing of Boca Mina by Marco Garro.
S1 Metabolic Studio
Signing of Not a Monument: Lauren Bon and the Aesthetics of Regeneration by Alex Ardyce Jones.
H4 Palermo Publishing
Signing of Songs for Birds and the Lonely by Dietmar Busse.
E8 Roma Publications
Signing of Parallax by Ari Marcopoulos.
I6 The Eriskay Connection
Signing of Dead Letter Room by Allie Tsubota.
T64 ZOETROPE ATHENS
Launch and signing of when i meet you in the sea by Ioanna Tsiamoura.
D5 5b
Signing of A landscape shredded by Molly Rose Lieberman.
T65 Balam
Signing of Becoming of Flesh with Robert Flynt, Ash Allen, and Luis Alberto Juárez.
N4 Draw Down Books
Signing of Take a Picture, It Will Last Longer by Brooke DiDonato.
F7 Kodoji Press
Launch of Artificial Creativity, edited by Kunsthaus Aarau.
E3 KWY Ediciones
Signing of Kalabongo by Jorge Panchoaga.
PR2 Magazzino Italian Art Museum
Exhibition tour of Arte Povera: Medium and Message and Magazzino publications with Beatriz Cifuentes and Nicola Lucchi.
A48 Minigolf Deportivo
Launch and signing of Conchitas by Francisca Osses.
H4 Palermo Publishing
Signing of Closer to the Sun by Katharina Poblotzki.
F2 SUPER LABO
Signing of Eyes and Skies by Chad Moore.
T57 Witty Books
Launch and signing of Light Exercises for the Spirit by Krisztián Éder.
T64 ZOETROPE ATHENS
Launch of You Can’t Go Home Again by Antigoni Papantoni.
O5 Divided Publishing
Signing of Wave of Blood by Ariana Reines.
E3 KWY Ediciones
Signing of Boca Mina by Marco Garro.
Offsite Programs
New Openings Against Old Surfaces: On Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper
Printed Matter, Inc., 231 11th Ave., New York, NY 10001
This is the first exhibition focused specifically on the publishing output of pioneering artist Gordon Matta-Clark, with a particular focus on his project Walls Paper. On view from September 9th–November 29th, the show offers an in-depth consideration of the 1973 publication, situating the work as a key experiment within the artist’s diverse and ambitious practice, and with the artists’ book medium at large.
BUILDING BOOKS
SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 W 21 Street, New York, NY 10011
Building Books. Corraini Edizioni: Children, Art, Design, and Everything Else traces over fifty years of publishing adventure through books, projects, authors, and installations that have crossed the boundaries between publishing, art, design, and illustration.
Book Launch & Talk: Angel Otero and Randy Kennedy
Hauser & Wirth Bookshop, 443 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011
On the occasion of NY Art Book Fair and celebrating the release of Angel Otero by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, please join artist Angel Otero for a reading and conversation with Ursula magazine’s Editor in Chief Randy Kennedy. After gaining attention for his experimental abstract oil paintings in the early 2010s, the Puerto Rican artist Otero began to pursue a bold new direction, merging his acclaimed form of abstraction with figurative elements to create multilayered, dreamlike scenes that synthesize the observed and the imagined into powerful meditations on memory and identity. This book explores recent developments in the artist’s work, culminating in his highly anticipated 2026 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Somerset. Alongside insightful essays by curators Tobias Ostrander and John Tain, a conversation between Otero and curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm explores the artist’s singular practice in his own words, while studio photography documents his labor-intensive process of layering, peeling, and collaging oil paint. Angel Otero will be available to sign books after the reading.
Curatorial walkthrough of Paper Cuts: Independent Publishing in the United States, 2000–2025 with Christopher Kardambikis
Center for Book Arts, 28 W 27th St, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10001
Paper Cuts: Independent Publishing in the United States, 2000–2025 examines twenty-five years of independent publishing in the United States through a collection of more than 600 zines and small-press publications gathered and researched by Christopher Kardambikis over the past decade. Developed through extensive travel, studio visits, and sustained conversations with artists and publishers across the country, the project documents a distributed and largely self-organized field of artistic production operating outside commercial and institutional publishing structures.
The exhibition presents a focused selection from the collection alongside a large-scale visual installation reflecting the breadth and density of the archive. Three guest curators—publishers working within distinct communities—develop thematic reading tables that offer distinct interpretive frameworks shaped by queer publishing, Black-led editorial platforms, and DIY print networks. Together, these perspectives situate individual works within broader systems of production, exchange, and circulation that have defined independent publishing in the early twenty-first century.
Tropic Editions Publisher Showcase
Index Greenpoint, 698 Manhattan Ave, Floors 2 & 3, Brooklyn, NY 11222
Honolulu-based imprint Tropic Editions presents a one-night-only publisher showcase at Index Greenpoint with books, merch, film screenings, and music from the TE extended ʻohana.