At the New York Art Book Fair, the Zine Tent Refuses to Go Quiet

Over 300 exhibitors from across the world have filled MoMA PS1 in Queens for the 20th anniversary edition of the New York Art Book Fair, the annual gathering organized by Printed Matter that runs through the weekend.

On opening night, staffers handed visitors plastic string-closure folders, complete with lenticular Tweety Bird prints, for storing the zines, flyers and uncategorizable artworks encountered inside. The fair's outdoor zine tent, situated across from artist Precious Okoyomon's sculpture in the courtyard, functions as a pocket-sized universe where, as one observer put it, marginalia is the text — and the overlooked, subversive and playful currents of politics and queer culture flow freely.

The fair's scale and character resist easy summary. More than 300 exhibitors from around the world form what amounts to a giant, chimeric bookstore that feels unmistakably alive. Regulars have learned to expect the unexpected from the annual event, and this year proved no different.

Among the exhibitors drawing attention on opening night were art workers Jenna Hamed, Aya Krisht and Rhonda Khalifeh of the Book Arts Solidarity Network, who handed out flyers for a publishers' meet-up after the fair — a space for connection beyond the museum's walls.

The organization first formed as a way to challenge book institutions' silence on the genocide in Palestine. It is now launching the third annual edition of its MAKEREADY publication. For the risograph-printed booklet, Hamed, Krisht and Khalifeh collected paintings, photographs and written reflections from four artists in Gaza and South Lebanon. As they assembled the material, one thread connected all the works: the color yellow.

Hamed described the process of putting the poetic publication together as "cathartic" — a way to process an era of bald imperialism and dispossession by centering the artists who are witnessing it.

"It really came out of skill," Hamed said of the organization's ability to collaborate across borders. "We know what we're doing."

The contrast is hard to miss. While the fair occupies a museum campus in Long Island City, its most charged material travels through paper, staples and risograph ink rather than plinths or projection rooms. The zine tent, in particular, hosts work whose politics are overt and whose distribution is deliberately small-scale.

For Printed Matter, the 20th anniversary lands at a moment when claims about the death of reading circulate widely. The scene at MoMA PS1 suggests a different picture: hundreds of publishers, a courtyard sculpture by Okoyomon, and a solidarity network printing work by artists in Gaza and South Lebanon, all within a single weekend's reach.

With MAKEREADY's third edition now launching and the Book Arts Solidarity Network convening publishers beyond the fair's closing, the gathering looks set to keep feeding the networks it hosts well after the tents come down.