Alessandro Segalini

This full-color scholarly exhibition catalog project is the result of a collaboration with Binghamton University Art Museum.

The exhibition curator Claire Kovacs writes: “Joy is transformative. It vibrates with generative possibility in an emergent and collective capacity to reimagine dominant structures and reclaim power. Play is nourishment. It is a vital and self-affirming expression of a community’s spirit. Together, joy and play are an antidote, a space of resistance, a refusal to break. They make space for one to revel in self-affirmation, kinship, and love.”

This full-color scholarly catalog offer viewers access to an intergenerational visual conversation between the sculptures and installations of Miguel Luciano, and the photographs of El Barrio in the ’60s–’70s by Hiram Maristany celebrating Puerto Rican culture while advocating self-determination, reclaiming joy and play as forms of power and resistance.

The book is typeset in RB Sagona, a versatile modern slab serif building on the clarendon/ionic model; the display font is XYZ Ballast, a robust & playfully punchy typeface based on “Egyptienne” wood type. The visual language also extended to the design of the pins distributed during the opening of the exhibition (March 24, 2020).

My printer recommendation was accepted by the Museum, and the catalog was printed and bound by GHP, with a first run of 300 copies.