Reading Group: Printmaking and Social Movements: Facilitated by Ivan Knapp

Aisha Alabbar Gallery 8 - 22 June 2023 
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Aisha Alabbar Gallery 8, 15, 22 June | 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
As part of Press Print!, the reading group titled "Printmaking and Social Movements" will consider key technical, historical, and intellectual frameworks for the development of printmaking practices in contemporary art and art history. Using a thematic approach each session will be structured around terms which comprise a print vocabulary.
 
Participants are required to commit to three sessions. Spaces are limited, to register, click here.
 
Programme

 

8th of June: The dissenting print

 

Led by Ivan Knapp, the first session will consider the relationship between printmaking and social movements. We will explore how prints have been significant to the emergence and formation of political groups and why they continue to provide a vehicle for dissent across different geographical and historical contexts.

 

Text:

 

‘Introduction’ in Ralph Shikes, The Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso, Beacon Press: Boston, MA, 1969

 

15th of June: Printmaking and the Mexican revolution

 

Led by Diego Mendoza, the second session will focus on printmaking in the context of the Mexican revolution, in particular the ways in which print technologies facilitated the participation of women in political discourse.

 

Text:

 

‘Introduction’, in Corinna Zeltsman, Ink Under the Finger Nails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, University of California Press: Berkeley, 2021

 

22nd of June: Printmaking the Present: Piotr Szyhalski's COVID-19 Reports

 

In the third and final session, Brian Gonzalez will lead a discussion of the Covid-19: Labor Camp Report, a poster project by US based Polish artist Piotr Szyhalski during the 2020 pandemic. The project opens up questions about how new printmaking practices can respond to present crises and interact with digital technologies and platforms. 

 

Text:

 

Colette Gaiter, ‘The Bonfire of the Atrocities’, and Joseph Del Pesco, ‘Encounters’, in Piotr Szyhalski and Pamela Johnson, Covid-19: Labor Camp Report, Labor Camp Souvenirs, 2022

 

and

 

Paul Schmelzer, ‘No Holds Barred: A Look at Piotr Szyhalski’s Daily COVID-19 Reports’,Walkerart, Apr 27, 2020. Accessed at: https://walkerart.org/magazine/piotr-szyhalskis-no-holds-barred-covid-19-art