Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
Since the 1980s, Belgian artist Sigefride Bruna Hauman has created a highly original body of work in different media. Her installations, reliefs and videos are the subject of a much-overdue retrospective organized by M Leuven—and of this first monograph.
Rituals of Care is an extensive monograph devoted to the work of Antonio Obá, published in conjunction with his eponymous exhibition presented at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, curated by Andrea Bellini. Extensively illustrated, the book immerses the reader in Obá’s multifaceted oeuvre and in the magical iconographic universe of his paintings.
Claiming that the museum is not enough means asking what a museum should be and do, eventually questioning the role of cultural institutions in society. Through conversations, stills of documentaries, responses, and reprints of archival documents that explore ideas of architecture on the ground, this volume reflects on the tools deployed by the institution to redefine its relationship to others.
Affirmer que le musée ne suffit pas, c’est interroger ce qu’un musée devrait être et faire, et réfléchir de manière critique sur le rôle des institutions culturelles dans nos sociétés. À travers des conversations, des photogrammes de documentaires, des interventions et des reproductions d’archives questionnant les conceptions de l’architecture sur le terrain, ce volume réfléchit aux outils mis en œuvre par l’institution pour redéfinir sa relation aux autres.
Semi-Nomadic Debt-Ridden Bedouins is the first monograph on the work of the Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif. Spanning nearly two decades of moving-image and installation work, it combines visual documentation with texts that reflect on the charged political landscapes through which al-Sharif navigates.
This monograph marks the occasion of the first European survey of Nicola L. (1932–2018). Often discussed in the context of Pop Art, activism, feminism, and design, this is the first in-depth exploration of the multi-layered and expansive nature of her extraordinary practice, which also encompassed cosmology, environmental concerns, spirituality, political protest, and sexuality.
Edited by Lorenzo Giusti and Valentina Gervasoni
Essay by Brandon LaBelle
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2024, English / Italian, softcover, 11 x 17.7 cm, 96 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-32-4
Sonia Boyce engages with the artist and sound theorist Brandon LaBelle, who guides us through the artist’s poetics, considering sound as a form of radical inclusion, a medium capable of generating interaction, narratives and new understanding. Sound and listening construct processes that challenge human individuality and conventional languages. Sound, by its porous nature, and the cultural and symbolic manifestation of music fostering social connections, exert an influence on everyone’s capacity to participate.
Sonia Boyce’s project for Palazzo della Ragione saw her collaborate with three students from the “Gaetano Donizetti” Higher Institute of Musical Studies in Bergamo, who were invited to perform and improvise popular songs in the heart of Bergamo’s “Città Alta.” The act of singing from balconies is an explicit reference to the lockdowns, during which people sang songs from inside their homes to support each other in what was a time of crisis. These actions inspired the artist, for whom singing itself represents a gesture of altruism and empathy.
The Joy of Cacophony is the second book in a series of short essay collections inspired by the site-specific art projects specially conceived for GAMeC at Palazzo della Ragione, a symbolic, time-honored location within the city of Bergamo that embodies the values of community life and participation. The artist was asked to name an author who interests her—be it a researcher, a philosopher or a scholar—and whose thinking could be said to underpin the project, with a view to finding a path through the complexities of the present day, starting from the work produced but without necessarily lingering on it.
