Real Time and Space is overjoyed to host REAL TALKS with resident artists madeleine aguilar and bex ya yolk, and our special guest, Vivian Sming. Get here early for pizza on Wednesday, April 9th from 7-9pm at RTS located at 125 10th St. Oakland.
madeleine is a multidisciplinary artist + musician from chicago. her work is often mobile / modular / interactive and can be found in backyards, libraries, storefronts, homes, galleries & book fairs. she responds to existing environments, building structures, furniture & environments that prompt users to actively reconsider & redefine their function(s). using the archive as form, she marks time by cataloging lived spaces, collected objects, familial histories, personal relationships, natural phenomena, mundane routines, and ephemeral moments.
she is the founder of bench press, a risograph press based on friendship, play & collaboration. bench press often partners with artists who are new to the book as form, utilizing the risograph as a tool for skill sharing and cultivating new friendships. she currently runs the print lab in the school of design at the university of illinois chicago and co-teaches a summer risography & bookmaking course at ox-bow school of art & artists’ residency.
bex ya yolk is a visual artist, graphic designer, book maker, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk received a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a concentration in Book Arts as a full merit scholar.
yolk is the founder of THUNGRY––a practice + publishing initiative, and artists’ book bindery complicating traditional ways of book building and semantics through experimentation + queering praxis. yolk utilizes the confines and structure of the Artists’ Book, fundamental principles in design, and exploratory methodologies in sculpture to activate, interrogate, speculate, and disrupt what we’ve come to understand qualifies a Book through extensive, generative research into the ‘Maternal Complex’ made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, abortion access activism, reproductive justice and health care disparities, and container technics exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + these kinds of bodies.
Vivian Sming is an artist and publisher who experiments with books as art, discourse, exhibition, and archive. Since 2017, Sming has published a wide range of artists’ books through their studio Sming Sming Books. They work in close collaboration with artists whose works and ideas inform design, material, and printing choices. Sming is committed to promoting critical discourse, advancing cultural equity, and creating alternative sites of knowledge production through the act of publishing.