Veronica Roberts

Contemporary artists of the Asian diaspora challenge the boundary between life and death through art Copublished with the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, this book accompanies Spirit House, a significant exhibition related to the museum’s Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI). A thematic exploration of the work of 33 Asian American and Asian diasporic artists, Spirit House asks the question, what does it mean to speak to ghosts, inhabit haunted spaces or enter different dimensions? Inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter to the supernatural, this book considers how art can collapse the distance between the past and present, as well as between this world and the next. Here, contemporary artists reckon with the spiritual and spectral in our visual culture, question the many forms that ghosts can take and challenge data-driven, scientific methods of understanding the world around us. Featuring many previously unpublished works, this first publication of the AAAI includes an essay by preeminent Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and four ghost stories by artists included in the exhibition. Artists include: Kelly Akashi, Korakrit Arunanondchai, James Clar, Binh Danh, Dominique Fung, Pao Houa Her, Greg Ito, Tommy Kha, Heesoo Kwon, Timothy Lai, An-My Lê, Dinh Q. Lê, Kang Seung Lee, Tidawhitney Lek, Jarod Lew, Reagan Louie, Cathy Lu, Nina Molloy, Tammy Nguyen, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Catalina Ouyang, Maia Cruz Palileo, Namita Paul, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, Kour Pour, Jiab Prachakul, Stephanie H. Shih, Do Ho Suh, Masami Teraoka, Salman Toor, Lien Truong, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Wanxin Zhang.

Charles White (1918–1979), one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished and innovative draftsmen, was also highly regarded as an educator and activist. His life spanned the Great Depression and the WPA era as well as the civil rights movement and the early days of feminism, movements that he not only actively participated in but also shaped. This catalog celebrates the artist’s remarkable career and legacy and the generous gift of artworks to The University of Texas from Susan G. and Edmund W. Gordon, lifelong friends of White and his wife, Frances.In addition to essays on each of the twenty-three works of art owned by The University of Texas and an interview with Edmund Gordon and his son, Ted Gordon, the catalog includes first-person tributes to White from artists, writers, actors, activists, and students whose lives he touched, including fellow artists Margaret Burroughs and Alice Neel; singer Harry Belafonte; poet Langston Hughes; and former students David Hammons, Kent Twitchell, and Kerry James Marshall.

Nina Katchadourian: Curiouser accompanies the Blanton Museum’s mid-career survey of the work of Brooklyn-based artist Nina Katchadourian, organized by Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Veronica Roberts. The book reveals the artist’s humor, ingenuity, and ability to unearth the creative potential that “lurks within the mundane,” to use her words. The diverse range of art it highlights includes Mended Spiderwebs, a series of photographs documenting the artist’s attempts to weave red string into dilapidated spiderwebs, and Under Pressure, a recent video that Katchadourian took of herself lip-synching to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury’s duet using her mobile phone in the cramped quarters of an airplane lavatory. We learn about art projects she has made with the assistance not only of arachnids and rock stars, but also United Nations translators, birdcall experts, librarians, sports announcers, parking lot attendants, an accent elimination coach, and even her own parents.This exhibition catalogue marks the first significant publication on Katchadourian’s work and features essays by Jeffrey Kastner and Veronica Roberts, as well as an interview between the artist and Stuart Horodner. In addition, it includes Katchadourian’s accounts of fourteen individual works paired with creative essays from a multidisciplinary team of contributors including artist Ann Hamilton, animal behavior expert Laurel Braitman, and sound art scholar Christoph Cox. Through these diverse perspectives, readers are introduced to Katchadourian’s unbridled curiosity and puckish wit.