Chinese, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in China and the United States.
Born 18 May 1957, in Beijing, China.
Artist, architect, designer, curator, publisher, activist.
After spending most of his childhood in the provinces of China, Ai Weiwei moved to Beijing in the mid-1970s to attend the city’s film academy. While there, he co-founded the first of the loose collectives of pro-democracy artists to emerge in the city, known as the Stars Group (...
American, 20th–21st century, female.
Born 19 November 1960, in L’Anse (Michigan).
Book artist, poet, performance artist, publisher, educator. Artists’ books, wallpaper.
Conceptual Art.
Sally Alatalo completed her undergraduate degree in fine art at Kansas City Art Institute in 1982 and her master’s degree in fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in ...
American photography foundation and publisher. Aperture magazine was founded in San Francisco in 1952 by American photographers
British, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in the UK.
Born 1958, in Georgetown, Guyana.
Video artist, film maker, photographer, journalist, broadcaster. Scratch videos.
George Barber has a BA from St Martin’s School of Art in London (1980) and an MA from the Slade School of Art in London (...
American, 20th century, female.
Born 3 June 1954, in St Louis (Missouri).
Book artist, educator. Artists’ books.
Carol June Barton earned her BFA in painting from Washington University in St Louis. Working as an administrator at the Glen Echo Park Arts Center, Washington, DC, she was invited to participate in her first artists’ book project. Her book, an edition of 200 titled ...
British, 20th–21st century, male.
Born November 1939, London.
Printer, printmaker, writer, poet, graphic artist. Artists’ books.
The son of a London docker, Ken Campbell was apprenticed in 1956 to a letterpress printer in Stepney Green and studied at the London College of Printing in 1959...
American graphic designer. Carson studied fine art and art history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, graduating in 1966. She started her career as a graphic designer in 1967 working for United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, TN, designing magazines and educational materials. Working with limited budgets and for readers ranging from children in kindergarten to adults, she learnt to communicate with varying age groups. Drawing on her magazine design skills, she began work for Color Productions in ...
American, 20th–21st century, male.
Born 1973, in Hong Kong.
Video artist, multi-media artist, activist, and publisher. Artists’ books
Paul Chan spent his early childhood in Hong Kong but immigrated to Omaha, Nebraska, in his youth. He began his BFA in video and digital arts at the Art Institute of Chicago in ...
American, 20th century, female.
Born 1963, in Inglewood (California).
Book artist, printmaker (letterpress). Papermaking.
Julie Chen received her BFA in printmaking from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. While a student she founded Flying Fish Press. She began graduate studies in book arts at Mills College in Oakland in ...
Chinese, 20th–21st century, male.
Born 1953.
Painter, sculptor. Portraits, still-lifes, landscapes.
or Zheng Zaidong
Cheng Tsai-tung trained in journalism before switching to painting. While technically fairly rudimentary, his work proceeds from a synthetic vision that he renders in large flat areas.
1984–1985, Taiwan New Painting...
French, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1952, in Paris.
Sculptor, painter.
Jean-Marc Debenedetti started out as a poet and, as such, was a co-founder of the literary review Soror (1972-1975) and, from 1979 to 1986, the founder-editor of a further review, Ellébore. He makes no real distinction between his activities as a poet and as a sculptor. His sculptures are essentially anthropomorphic, ranging in style from the figurative to the abstract. He has exhibited since ...
Israeli, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1951.
Photographer. Multimedia.
A theorist and art and philosophy critic, he is also an editor and artist.
He takes part in group exhibitions, notably Implicit Connections in 1997 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
The process of creating, storing, manipulating, and displaying photographic images through electronic devices such as digital cameras, computers, and printers. By the late 20th century digital technology had largely replaced traditional chemical photographic processes. That digital photographs are easier to produce, manipulate, and distribute than their analogue predecessors has led to significant changes to vernacular, artistic, and commercial photographic practices. The boundaries of what constitutes ...
Austrian film maker, video artist, photographer and performance artist. After studies in Linz and Vienna (1955–64) and work as a script girl, film editor and film extra (1965–8), she signalled her decision to follow a career as an artist by changing her name to Valie Export (a combination of the abbreviated form of her forename and a reference to a popular brand of cheap Austrian cigarettes, ‘Austria Export’). The provocative and politically engaged stance she then developed in her work constituted a relentless exploration of feminist issues and a wish for direct social change as a result of her activities as an artist. In one of her best-known earlier works, ...
Chinese, 20th – 21st century, female.
Born 1954, in Xinzhu, Taiwan.
Painter. Genre scenes, interiors with figures.
Fang Xun graduated in 1978 from the journalism department of the Chinese Culture University, Taipei, and then started her artistic career. In 1986, she began to take part in exhibitions and in ...
British, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in London and New York.
Born 1964, in Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire).
Installation artist, writer, curator, publisher.
Conceptual Art.
Liam Gillick studied at the Hertfordshire College of Art (1983-1987) and Goldsmith’s College in London (1984-1987). He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in ...
British, 20th–21st century, male.
Born 1964, in Wakefield (West Yorkshire), England.
Curator, writer, artist, publisher. Artists’ books.
After studying fine art at Newcastle Polytechnic (now the University of Northumbria), in 1988 Matthew Higgs moved to London. Building on his interest in mail art and alternative distribution strategies, as well as his history of zine making as a teen, he began publishing the experimental, anonymous ...
French, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1953, in Clamart.
Painter. Scenes with figures, figures.
Nouvelle Figuration.
Philippe Huart was originally an illustrator and graphic designer for literary publishers and record companies. Since 1991 he has devoted himself to painting. His figurative representations are like superimposed catalogues of images in which words are integrated and have a readable and smooth appearance. They echo sources close to Pop Art or Narrative Figuration. He produces series of works: faces, animal portraits and various fragments of reality such as mouths, pills, etc. Huart has taken part in collective exhibitions such as: the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, Paris, ...
South African, 21st century, male.
Born 29 October 1976, in Johannesburg.
Photojournalist, documentary photographer. Portraiture, landscape, social groups.
Pieter Hugo worked in the film industry until 1999, when he started freelancing as an editorial photographer. After publishing in Colors, an influential photo magazine, Hugo in ...
American, 20th–21st century, female.
Born 1944, in Brooklyn, New York.
Active in London.
Poet, writer, publisher. Artists’ books, conceptual writing.
Sarah Jacobs was educated at Vassar College, New York and Girton College, Cambridge, UK. Her work as a poet developed into publishing and making artists’ books. These have increasingly manipulated pre-existing texts, for example, Conrad’s ...
