Five Things to Know… ‘Unfolding Events,’ an exhibition of artists’ books

“What’s Happening With Momma?,” an artist’s book by the American artist and photographer Clarissa Sligh, gives shape to a memory. 

When Sligh was seven, her mother gave birth to her sister in the family’s home. The book’s form evokes that experience. 

First published in 1988, the book is composed of a cardboard sheet cut to resemble the row house where Sligh’s family lived, and unfolds accordion style to reveal various views of the house. The exterior side features photographs of the backs of houses, porches, and yards. On the interior, readers encounter Sligh’s personal family photographs on each page. Pieces of folded paper that descend like stairs from below each photo contain text describing Sligh’s experience of playing outside while her mother was in labor. 

A copy of Sligh’s book, one of 150 original copies, is featured in “Unfolding Events: Exploring Past and Present in Artists’ Books,” an exhibition on view at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, part of Yale Library, through March 1. 

Artists’ books are works of art presented in book form or inspired by books; They commonly feature imagery and text, and draw on structures that, like books, invite exploration. 

The exhibition, drawn from the collections of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale and the Beinecke Library, was curated by Jessica Pigza, associate director of arts library special collections, and Bill Landis, teaching and research services librarian. The works on view explore the experiences of marginalized communities and the artists’ personal responses to today’s world. It also highlights the university’s rich artists’ book collections housed within the Yale Library, the curators say. 

One of the exhibition’s goals, Pigza said, is to raise awareness among Yale students and faculty that these collections are available to them for teaching and research. 

“Especially for undergraduates, artists’ books can be more approachable than primary source documents, such as maps and/or handwritten letters,” she said. “Some artists’ books draw on primary source documents to create rich, deeply researched works. Others are personal to the artists, recording their memories, experiences, and perspectives.” 

The exhibition consists of two sections: One focuses on works in which artists have shared their personal perspectives of the world. The other features artists’ books that contemplate the past. The works displayed in the latter section are presented alongside primary source materials from the Beinecke’s collections related to their historical themes. 

Here are five things to know about the exhibition: 

“Unfolding Events” features a local connection. 

New Haven-born book artist Tia Blassingame had a hand in two works on display. Her artist’s book “’Pause” gives voice to the experiences of Black women experiencing menopause. Shaped like an octagonal locket, the book’s cover features a silhouette of a Black woman. It springs open to reveal pages bearing words that describe various often-contradictory feelings — “isolated,” “content,” “anxious,” “healthier” — that often accompany the close of women’s reproductive years.

Her father, the late John W. Blassingame, a pioneer in the study of American slavery, was a professor of history and African American studies at Yale from 1970 to 1999. 

Artists’ books often involve creative collaboration.

In “Boundaries,” poet Richard Blanco and landscape photographer Jacob Hessler collaborate to explore how societal boundaries, such as those that shape perspectives on race, culture, and gender, influence people’s sense of community. 

Another work on view, “Pictures from the Outside,” is a collaboration between 13 incarcerated men and artist Chantal Zakari, who photographed places outside prison walls at the men’s direction. Zakari’s photographs are presented with the incarcerated men’s annotations on the importance of the location, whether it be a school or a bodega, on their lives and memories. 

“The Business is Suffering,” a work on view by book artist Maureen Cummins, provides a unique perspective on the inhumane business of American slavery.

The book presents transcriptions of letters by Americans complaining of the hassles and hardships related to the commerce of chattel slavery. The printed transcriptions are superimposed over the handwritten letters, which belong to the American Antiquarian Society. In the display, the book is opened to a letter dated Feb. 24, 1846, in which an enslaver laments the difficulty on selling Lucy, an enslaved woman, due to the woman’s “low-spirited situation.” 

Illustrations of enslaved people lying side by side on slave ships accompany the depictions of the letters. As the letters move forward in time chronologically, fewer and fewer enslaved people are pictured in the illustrations, reflecting the increasing difficulty faced by those engaged in the slave trade over time, Landis noted.

The book is presented alongside documents from the Yale Library’s collections concerning the sale and transportation of human beings from Northern ports to Southern states. 

A meditation on corsets considers the crossroads of fashion and physical pain. 

“Upholstered Cage,” by book artist Tamar Stone, examines the tension between late-19th-century fashion and the painful experience of wearing a corset. 

“Stone take quotations from 19th-century advertising expounding on the supposed benefits of wearing corsets, such as how they purportedly protected the fetus during pregnancy, and couples them with images of women wearing corsets and their testimony about the garment’s painful effects,” Landis said. 

Stone’s book is presented with an advertisement for corsets from an August 1872 issue of Harper’s Bazaar from the Beinecke Library’s collections. 

One artist’s book on view gives voice to Sacajewea.   

Sacajewea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman who assisted the Lewis and Clark expedition of the Louisiana Territory, is never directly quoted in historical sources. The only references to her come from white men on the expedition. In “The Lost Journals of Sacajewea,” writer Debra Magpie Earling (Bitterroot Salish) employs verse to imagine a voice for the woman who helped the expedition establish cultural connections with indigenous peoples. Her words are accompanied by photographs of indigenous peoples of the American West who could be representatives of those who encountered the explorers. 

The book is paired with a first-person account of the Lewis and Clark expedition published in 1807 by Patrick Gass, who served as a carpenter on the journey and only referenced Sacajewea as “wife to our interpreter,” from the Beinecke Library’s collections.