Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines

Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines is the first exhibition dedicated to the rich history of five decades of artists’ zines produced in North America. Since the 1970s, zines—short for “fanzines,” magazines, or self-published booklets of texts and images, usually made with a copy machine—have given a voice and visibility to many operating outside of mainstream culture. Artists have harnessed the medium’s essential role in communication and community building and used it to transform material and conceptual approaches to art-making. This canon-expanding and multimedia exhibition documents zines’ relationship to various subcultures and avant-garde practices, from punk and street culture to conceptual, queer, and feminist art. It also examines zines’ intersections with collage, craft, film, drawing, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video.