Boekie Woekie is an artists’-run bookshop and gallery in Amsterdam that was founded in 1986 by a group of six artist. Soon Henriëtte van Egten (Dutch), Rúna Thorkelsdóttir (Icelandic) and Jan Voss (German) remained from this group and shaped this enterprise for artists’ publications that conventional bookshops find difficult to promote and sell. Alongside their own artistic careers, the three dedicate their work to this collective sculpture in progress as they call it. At its heart is what art is all about: a free, poetic and anarchic spirit and a sense of a keen, sensitive humour. For almost 40 years now, these attitudes in conjunction with a wealth of experience and knowledge have nourished the risky and fascinating undertaking with its generous and welcoming atmosphere of exchange between people of all backgrounds, artists, experts or passers-by. To make that possible, everything is managed in self-responsibility, from the financial side and the bureaucratic administration, to the website and the sales in the shop, online, at fairs, and even in temporary branches abroad.
The exhibition focusses on the Boekie Woekie’s activities and the many threads it weaves around the world since its beginning. Without losing sight of its unclassifiable nature, it aims to illustrate the challenges and potentials of its two main principles: firstly, its uncompromising independence which is based on complete self-financing, and secondly, its commitment to self-published and small press titles by artists, regardless of their fame. These factors make the bookshop gallery unique, probably worldwide. They open up breathing holes within the late capitalist art world for life to return to art and vice versa, as Jan Voss, one of three Boekie Woekiers puts it.