Between the Lines Broadside Collaboration:
Cold World
About Between the Lines
Center for Book Arts 2021 Workspace Artist in Residence Rowan Renée‘s year-long project Between the Lines—consisting of correspondence based workshop series with LGBTQ+ artists incarcerated in Texas and Florida—concluded with an in-person reading & print launch event at CBA (28 West 27th St, 3rd Fl) on Wednesday, October 27, 2021.
Six limited-edition broadsides produced by collaborative pairs of NYC-based artists and queer incarcerated artists are available for order. Individual broadsides are $15 and the entire series can be purchased for $75. All proceeds directly benefit organizations supporting queer incarcerated artists.
About the Cold World Broadside
This edition of 100 broadsides is a collaboration between NYC-based artist Faride Mereb and queer incarcerated artist Master Ramsey-El.
Mereb’s designed the broadside as a panoptic with Ramsey-El’s creative text running clockwise, and his interpretive text running counter-clockwise—as if in dialogue with himself. Below the text, Mereb recreated the stamp that was on the envelope containing Ramsey-El’s text, which resembles an anatomical diagram of an eye.
Faride Mereb
Faride Mereb is a Venezuelan artist, award-winning book designer, teacher, researcher, and founder of publishing house Ediciones Letra Muerta. She currently lives in NYC with her husband, where she teaches and designs. Mereb is a visiting scholar at Columbia University exploring North and South Americas’ hybridity through its printing and book history. She has exhibited at CBA and is currently co-curating a show in Washington Project for the Arts.
Faride Mereb es una artista venezolana, diseñadora de libros premiada, profesora, investigadora y fundadora de Ediciones Letra Muerta. Actualmente vive en Nueva York con su esposo, donde enseña y hace libros. Mereb es investigadora visitante en la Universidad de Columbia y explora la hibridación de América del Norte y del Sur a través de la impresión y la historia del libro. Ha expuesto en el CBA y actualmente está co-curando una exhibición en Washington project for the arts.
Master Ramsey-El
Bro. Truth, AKA Bro Hernandez Wiley, is a freedom fighter mobilizing his visual art and spoken word to combat racism, misogyny, and prejudice for all Americans. He has broken the chains of the mind to live free from oppression.
He is a contributor to A.B.O. Comix, based in Oakland, California, which publishes work from incarcerated LGBTQ+ people, and he participates in Between the Lines, a series of collaborative art workshops by correspondence. His contributions will be exhibited in The Power of We, a large-scale public art exhibition, supported by We, Women Photo, that will travel across the U.S. to venues in Anchorage, Atlanta, Chicago, and New Orleans. In 2021, his work was featured in the virtual exhibition Freedom & Captivity, a state-wide humanities initiative in Maine that asks contributors to imagine freedom in an abolitionist society.
Bro. Truth’s comics star himself as Katman, with sidekick Double Ree. They are members of the alien nation of Love Kats, from Planet Love. Their leader has given them orders to return to Planet Earth to help free humans from bondage and the tyranny of racist police and to assure the victory of the largest civil rights movement in history. He dreams of an intergalactic future on Planet Love, where his artwork will help him raise funds for a lawyer to advocate for his exoneration.
Other Broadsides in the Series
Claudia Cortínez + Scott Munro–>
Adama Delphine Fawundu + Bro. Truth–>
America Kissed Me in the Dark–>