“Art magazine! Very, very interesting, Lakshmi. I see you’re doing very important work,” said consulate agent Sherly Fan. “I personally would love to grant everyone an Extraordinary Talent Visa. However, you’ve got to roll the dice to determine your future.”
The sparkly, jumbo-sized die landed on RFE — Request for Evidence. Fan stamped the first page in my 4N travel document with red ink spelling out “ORDINARY” in all caps.
“This just means you need to come back and we need more evidence to prove that you’re an Extraordinary Talent,” Fan assured me. “It’s very easy to achieve. We both know it.” She handed me back an orange passport bearing my photo with a simple requirement for my next visit: “Evidence that when you sneeze, Forbes automatically updates its ‘Most Influential’ list.”
Getting my “ORDINARY” stamp at the Office of 4N Affairs
On the opening night of Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair (NYABF) at MoMA PS1 yesterday, September 11, I nearly missed the interactive 4N Consulate exhibition tucked away on the second floor. Organized by studio Special Special’s 4N Magazine, a twice-yearly publication highlighting international artists working in the United States, the 4N Consulate is both absurdist and painfully realistic — a parody and a reality check in one. Each personalized faux-passport “travel document” designed by artists Susana Gomez and Angel Tianying Yu invites American citizens like me, who “don’t typically experience the exhausting, over-complicated process of obtaining travel visas or visiting foreign consulates,” to confront the arbitrary nature of the immigration system.
This 19th edition of the fair returns to the Queens art museum after a couple of years in a Chelsea redbrick, which, in hindsight, offered more space to breathe and connect. (Pro-tip: Bring a handheld fan.) Still, nearly every indie press I visited brought the same irreverent spirit of collective making and solidarity that explicitly defies borders and imperialism, echoing the subversive histories of printmaking and radical publishing. To browse here is to cross borders of geography, identity, and form.
The New York Art Book Fair entrance at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens
Zines, biographies, novels, comic books, and more in a book bus parked outside the museum
Delicate fabric booklets, accordion photo books, and embroidered cat portraits drew me to simple project NY, a returning exhibitor. Artists Kiriko Shirobayashi and Masami Hirano, who met as children in Japan, said the collective embraces a diasporic perspective.
“A lot of the artists are from Japan but may be living in other countries,” Shirobayashi noted. “Everyone kind of has the same sensitivities, but at the same time [they] are dealing with different media.”
simple project NY artists Kiriko Shirobayashi (left) and Masami Hirano (right)
Over at Mexico City-based can can press, celebrating its fifth time at the NYABF, co-founder Jackie Crespo flipped through some of the riso-printed books on offer, like Melody Lu’s Sex With You S**** and Signs And Artifacts Noº5 (both 2025).
“There’s a little bit of my hand in everything,” Crespo said, adding that the two-person project grew through a patchwork of friends and global artists she calls “internet friends.” Her partner and co-founder, Gabino Azuela, handed me a flyer for his solo show, Plastic Fossils, which explores the afterlife of discarded plastic objects, at Selva Gallery in Bushwick with opening-night music by the beloved Secret Riso Club, one table over. “If you bring that flyer tomorrow, I hear you get a free shot,” he joked. (Big if true.)
can can press co-founders Gabino Azuela (left) and Jackie Crespo (right)
Political texts on display behind Inventory Press’s table
Among the newcomer presses, Relámpago (“lightning” in Spanish), based in Bogotá, Colombia, and founded in 2018, brought works ranging from anticolonial posters to miniature flip books illustrated entirely with keyboard symbols. Twin Cities-based Mizna, a journal focusing on Arab and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) artists, stocked its table with back issues, posters, and prints.
Deputy Director Elie Kevorkian told me that the magazine started “25 years ago [after] recognizing the call and the need to present our own voices on our own terms, without having to reference prevalent, popular perspectives on what it means to be Arab, Arab American, or SWANA American.”
Layla Faraj (left) and Elie Kevorkian at Mizna’s table
She noted that the press has been hard at work on a forthcoming Gaza Folio, a bilingual Arabic-English edition with contributions by artists and writers in Gaza. The special edition is guest edited by Gazan poet Yahya Ashour, who arrived in the US for a conference in September 2023, just before Israel’s bombardment and genocide began. Proceeds from three prints at the table will support Ashour and his family.
By the end of the night, one image stuck in my mind: María Belén Correa’s travel document identifying her as a political refugee. The 52-year-old Argentinian trans activist became the first trans Latin American person to receive political asylum in the US in 2004 and co-founded Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina, which won this year’s Shannon Michael Cane Award. Lina Etchesuri, an artist involved in the project, flipped through the new photo book Belén, María Belén (2025) to the reproduction of Belén Correa’s travel document — bearing the phrase “This is NOT a United States Passport” — set against an archival Pride protest image. Belén Correa arranged ephemera, letters, and photos of her loved ones and Argentinian trans community members on the other pages, a reminder that the visa is just one part of her story.
On the way home from Long Island City, I could see the piercing beams of “Tribute in Light” intruding on the stars, the cloudless sky, the airspace of birds who the annual installation puts in danger, a visible gash linking post-9/11 immigration policy to the vile tactics of the Trump administration. Knowledge put into practice has always posed a threat to authoritarianism, as the presses, publishers, and artists among us are well aware. Their printed materials bear words, yes, but also images stamped, inked, and sewn onto tokens meant to be held, loved, and shared hand to hand.
Pages from Belén, María Belén, including the activist’s travel document identifying her as a political refugee in the US
Lina Etchesuri of Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina
A family-friendly event!
Bread and Puppets in an alcove in the museum’s courtyard
Rita Mourao Barbosa, founder of Desapê in São Paulo, Brazil
A mini book by Cookie Mueller, the late novelist, filmmaker, and actress, at Palermo Publishing’s table
Relámpago marked its first time showing at the NYABF.
A flip book at Relámpago’s table, illustrated entirely with keyboard symbols
Photographer Lonnie Graham signs copies of his book A Conversation With the World, comprising photos and interviews he began conducting in the 1980s, published by Datz Press.
To browse here is to cross borders of geography, identity, and form.
