Description
TEXT BOOK is an original collection of ten commissioned texts written by artists and scholars: a text by Martin Berst, a short story by Norman Chernick-Zeitlin, experimental essays by Kosuke Kawahara and Kate Gaudy, theoretical texts by Alpesh Kantilal Patel and Coco Fusco, notes from a studio visit by Adara Mayers.
Ben-Tor & Carmi are longstanding partners in art and life with a robust exhibition record. TEXT BOOK: TAMY BEN-TOR & MIKI CARMI attends to the realities of this collaboration and serves as a companion to the bound image collection TEXT BOOK: TAMY BEN-TOR & MIKI CARMI. Text Book’s essays intersect art historical analyses, an artist’s interpretation, the reactions of a playwright and reflections of a film director, and a work of experimental fiction. Here, Minerva Projects aims to upend the usual ways painting and performance art are described. Graphic designer Joshua Gamma interprets Ben-Tor and Carmi’s practice liberally—never simply reproducing images of works, but instead distilling their visual vocabulary into core elements that operate as a language alongside the commissioned authors’ texts.
The contributions in TEXT BOOK include Academy Award nominated filmmaker Martin Brest’s mapping of his experience of Ben Tor and Carmi’s work; Internationally acclaimed artist, author, and theorist, Coco Fusco's analysis of Carmi’s innovations in painting, bringing attention to histories of eugenics and the grotesque as pertain to his contemporary art practice; Norman Chernick-Zeitlin poetic fictional narratives; Playwright Adara Meyers’ “Gutter Notes"; Kosuke Kawahara’s rendering of the artists through interconnected themes of the cosmos, Buddhism, fermentation, and dreamscapes; Alpesh Kantilal Patel’s art historical scholarship, curating, and criticism reflect his queer, anti-racist, and transnational approach to contemporary art; and the writing of Kate Gaudy.
Literary Nonfiction. Art. Essay. Hybrid. Jewish Studies. Collaboration.
Author Bio
Yasmeen Siddiqui is the founding director of Minerva Projects, an independent art press whose objective is to cultivate writing about the visual arts through an interdisciplinary and literary lens. In tandem with this work, Siddiqui lectures, writes, and edits; having her work published in artist and exhibition catalogues, as well as on Studio International and Hyperallergic, and in ART PAPERS, Cairo Times, Medina Magazine, Flash Art, Modern Painters, NKA, and The Brooklyn Rail. Current projects include a book length manuscript on the subject of home and a series of essays considering authoritarianism through the works of artists and authors. She is co-editing the anthology Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: The Storytellers of Art Histories (Intellect Books, 2022). She has been the recipient of 2018 Ucross Foundation Residency Fellow; 2018 ICI Independent Vision Curatorial Award Nominee; 2008 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute.
Author City: PINE PLAINS, NY USA
Tamy Ben-Tor was born in Jerusalem where she attended The School of Visual Theater, and lives in New York, where she met Carmi during the MFA program at Columbia University School of the Arts. Selected individual exhibitions: Radical Humanism (with Miki Carmi), Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv (2014); Young Emerging Artists Eating and Fucking (with Miki Carmi) Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw, Poland (2012);1646, Project Space, The Hague (2010); Disembodied Archetypes (with Miki Carmi), Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, Beaumontpublic +königbloc, Luxemburg (2009); Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland (2008); The Kitchen, PERFORMA 07, Salon 94, New York (2007). Selected group exhibitions: Le Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Theatrical Gestures, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2013); Day Labor, PS1/MoMA, New York (2005). Works in collections: American University Museum, Washington; Miami Art Museum, Miami; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA
Miki Carmi, born in Jerusalem, graduated from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem before receiving his MFA at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York. He has had solo shows at Stefan Stux Galley, NY, Beaumont Public, Luxemburg, Anne De Villepoix, Paris, and has participated in exhibitions at SOMA Museum, Seoul, MONA Museum, Tasmania, and HVCCA, Peekskill, NY. He has published two art books: Disembodied Archetypes (with Tamy Ben-Tor), 2009, and Miki Carmi, 2012 (with an essay by Coco Fusco). His work has been reviewed by Donald Kuspit in Artforum (March 2006), Ken Johnson at the NY Times, and Michael Wilson (Time-Out NY 2010). He is currently represented by Stefan Stux Gallery, NY.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA