The first chapter, Pink Dogwood, of my forthcoming publication A Tree Grows in Queens, is now available for pre-order from Conveyor Editions via this link: https://www.conveyor.studio/shop/p/ce-21
PM Art Book Fair Studio Visit
Conveyor Editions. Studio Visit: Magali Duzant.
Join us for a preview of Magali's new zine, A Tree Grows in Queens, and learn about her process of working with image, text, and archives in the book format. Link coming soon via the Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair. February 27, 2021, 2pm EST. Zoom link : https://zoom.us/j/98165630053
Image, Text, Ephemera class at Penumbra Foundation
This spring, I’ll be teaching the course Descriptive Systems : Image, Text, & Ephemera at Penumbra Foundation. The class runs on Saturdays from April 17 - May 22 from 2 - 5PM EST and is open to anyone, anywhere as we’ll be online! More info here : https://www.penumbrafoundation.org/imagetext
The Hours After
Friday, January 22, 2021 is the opening of The Hours After, a group show running every night from 6:00 to 11:59 PM through the 28th. I’ll be showing a new iteration of Live Stream Sunset over the course of the show. The exhibition is a part of Singapore Art Week.
Artists for Puerto Rico Fundraiser
I donated an 8 x 10 print, Palermo, to the Artists for Puerto Rico fundraiser. A share of the proceeds go towards continuing the mission of the organisation to assist in recovery efforts post Hurricane Maria.
Take What You Can't Get at ABC No Rio
I had the pleasure of creating the exhibition publication for Take What You Can’t Get at ABC No Rio.
Inspired by the role of artists as imaginators, and agitators, from the 1930s to the present day, Take What You Can't Get embraces our current moment of multilayered crisis (economic, racial justice, leadership, health) as an opportunity for artists to actively imagine a more desirable future. The exhibition's title addresses pre-existing artworld expectations of austerity and extreme inequality - that artists and art workers must take what they can get. The four projects, by three collectives and one artist, respond to the following questions: What do artists and art workers need now? What does our NYC community need now (and how can artists help)? What should we demand of our institutions - art or government? What does a more beautiful future look like? Projects take place both on-line and in New York City throughout the duration of the exhibition. Curated by Christina Freeman.
This is a link to the online interactive version of the publication.
Common Knowledge - Design in Times of Information Crisis at Kunstgewerbemuseum
Whole Queens Catalog will be on view this summer as part of Common Knowledge - Design In Times of Information Crisis, at Kunstgewerbemuseum in Dresden, Germany. The exhibition, a traveling version of the Bio 26 Design Biennial in Ljubljana, Slovenia opens July 4 and runs until November 1, 2020.
Instagram Live June 18th : NYPL Picture Collection
I’ll be taking over the NYPL Picture Collection’s instagram account from June 15 - 21 and on the 18th I’ll be doing a live stream to chat about how the Picture Collection played a huge role in the content and design of The Moon And Stars Can Be Yours.
Lenscratch Review of The Moon And Stars Can Be Yours
Lisa McCarty wrote a review of The Moon And Stars Can Be Yours for Lenscratch, I love the way that she closed, “In her pursuit of psychic services Duzant, or the narrator, is also searching for her voice as an artist, for self-possession, for future certainty….By the end of The Moon and Stars Can be Yours Duzant has extended this tradition, not by providing direct advice but by disclosing her own path toward living the questions perpetually, toward every day becoming.”
http://lenscratch.com/2020/06/magali-duzant-the-moon-and-the-stars-can-be-yours/
Dorothea Lange : Words And Pictures review
I had the immense pleasure to write about MoMA’s Dorothea Lange retrospective, Words & Pictures. I began writing about the show during NYC’s lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic ripping through the city. The piece was published as protests and marches blossomed across the country. I thought I knew Dorothea Lange’s work but this exhibition during this time in history underlined just how impactful her work and her photographic ideology were and still are.
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/dorothea-lange-words-and-pictures
NYPL Researcher Spotlight
I had the pleasure to speak to the New York Public Library about my current research through their collections and more around the history of NYC’s trees, from the Harlem Wishing Tree to the Queens Giant to the Mothers Day pink dogwood that my Grandfather dug out of his yard and replanted somewhere in Forest Park…. Interview can be read here : https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/06/05/nypl-researcher-spotlight-magali-duzant
TSA PDF : Zone V curated by Yael Eban
Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s initiative of exhibitions under the title TSA : PDF was a critics pick in the New York Times. Zone V, curated by Yael Eban includes work by Roni Aviv, Magali Duzant, Jiwoong Jang, Rehan Miskci, Adam Liam Rose, Cory Emma Siegler, Rachel Stern, and Gabriela Vainsencher. Zone V refers to the photographic middle gray, perceptually halfway between white and black. Morally ambiguous and neutral, gray is the color of complexity, filling the space between absolutes. Reduction of color evokes notions of necessity, distilling an image to its abstracted core. Triple-clicking on the home button of an iPhone turns bright colors to grayscale—a hack to combat phone addiction, altering our relationship to the screen in an instant. What are the possibilities and boundaries of the monochromatic? At what point does a color image hold so little color that it reads as gray? The monochrome and color works in this show prove that limits and restraints can yield artwork that is at once intellectually rigorous and expressive.
TSA_PDF is a series of printable exhibitions curated by Tiger Strikes Asteroid. People are invited to download and print these works on their home printers and share their “install shots,” which are shared on social media and TSA’s website.
Where Blue Birds Fly interview with Homayra Adiba for LensCulture
I had the immense pleasure to speak with Homayra Adiba about her beautiful project, Where Blue Birds Fly, for LensCulture earlier this year. The interview, included a selection of Adiba’s evocative images can be read on LensCulture here : https://www.lensculture.com/articles/homayra-adiba-where-blue-birds-fly
Parallel Universes : A Virtual Reading
I’ll be reading from The Moon And Stars Can Be Yours on Friday May 1st alongside Liz Sales and Lara Atallah as part of Parallel Universes : A Virtual Reading, hosted by I Write Artist Statements.
Let's Take This Outside
Happy to be a part of this online exhibition, Let’s Take This Outside, through Brooklyn’s NARS Foundation.
In the presented works, Esther Hovers, Magali Duzant and Hugo Rocci look at New York City through lenses that might appear different, but despite those differences they all try to respond to unanswerable questions in a period of uncertainty. The query oscillates around mathematical problems about movement, esoteric searches in the NYC Subway System, and narratives embedded in the city’s store fronts.
They portray the city as a space that allows for data collection, as a metaphor for the unpredictable, and most importantly as a space that beholds, perceives and considers its inhabitants –tourists, strollers, commuters and other types of professional and amateur walkers, in parallel intensity.
Link to view : https://www.narsfoundation.org/2020_virtual_exhibitions/lf-first
Illusions of the Photographer review for LensCulture
I wrote a review of Duane Michals’ exhibition Illusions of the Photographer at the Morgan Library for LensCulture. Highly recommend this smart, clever, gorgeous show.
You can read it here : https://www.lensculture.com/articles/duane-michals-the-illusions-of-the-photographer
Imprimé | Intimé | Collection at Galerie UQO
The Moon and Stars Can Be Yours is on view in the exhibition, Imprimé / Intimé / Collection curated by Collectif Blanc at Galerie UQO in Canada.
The Exhibition Imprimé / Intimé / Collection organized by Collectif Blanc presents itself as an immersive library where mini-collections of publications and objects are displayed, courtesy of around fifty publishers, designers, authors and artists. The device is augmented by the works of four visual artists who approach, in turn, the personal and encyclopedic archive (Celia Perrin Sidarous), the assembly of the book and the collection (Derek Sullivan), as well as the material qualities and of the print (Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Bryan-K. Lamonde).
Bio 26 : Common Knowledge Design Biennial
Whole Queens Catalog is included in the 26th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The biennial’s theme is Common Knowledge and runs from November 2019 through February 2020.
Alarum on PHmuseum
Alarum, an exhibition curated by Ardesia Projects, includes a selection of images from Sympathetic Magic, the photographic essay related to The Moon and Stars Can Be Yours. Up through January at PHmuseum.
The Moon and Stars Can Be Yours : Notes On Subway Psychics Book Launch // Printed Matter 10.24.19
October 24th , 6-8 pm Printed Matter will host the official launch for The Moon & Stars Can be Yours.
Book available for purchase here.
Launch link : https://www.printedmatter.org/programs/events/982
The Moon and Stars Can Be Yours is a freewheeling, far-roaming investigation into the contemporary world of spiritualism that began with Duzant’s obsessive collection of psychic fliers on the New York City subway system combined with ephemera from the NYPL Pictures Collection. In an age of increasing uncertainty, the wave of modern mysticism is always present, eagerly waiting to fill the void created by our digital lives. Duzant weaves together research-based writing with anecdotal stories, inviting the reader along for her ritualistic search for meaning, following the path of the Spiritualist and New Age movements.
The Moon and Stars Can Be Yours is playfully designed, the holographic foil and neon paper stocks are inspired by the fliers found on the subway. In the back of each book, a scratch off fortune card awaits the reader. The Moon and Stars Can Be Yours is the third book by Magali Duzant published by Conveyor Editions. Her previous books Light Blue Desire and I Looked & Looked, will also be available at the launch.