AA.VV., Artists Making Books, 2025

Artists Making Books explores the work of artists who have pushed the boundaries of the book as both an object and a medium of expression. Through exclusive interviews and essays, the contributors examine the relationships between authors, readers and collectors, and reflect on the artistic practices and dynamics that make artist’s books so compelling and significant today. The exhibition, presented at the American Academy in Rome in 2024 and curated by Ilaria Puri Purini, showcased examples of radical approaches to the book: subverting, inventing, inverting and celebrating letters, words, texts, form and structure; a curated history of how books have been created using diverse creative and graphic solutions. By examining the relationship between the historical avant-garde and the contemporary moment, Artists Making Books demonstrates how the book has been, and continues to be, an object of experimentation, a means of resisting commercial constraints and, ultimately, a space of refuge.

Through exclusive interviews and essays, the authors explore the relationships that books forge between artists, readers and collectors, whilst examining the artistic practices and power structures that make artist’s books so relevant and culturally significant today.