Ana Cordeiro

Ana Paula Cordeiro makes books by hand, photographs with film, prints from lead type, and writes either sparingly or profusely on unbound folios, which she then proceeds to bind into volumes. In 2018 she co-organized the multi-media installation Introspective Collective. In 2019 she contributed to a book publication about bookmaking called Bookforms. And in 2020 she was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and an Honorable Mention at the International Human Rights Arts Festival Creators of Justice Award for her essay Citizen. This fall, she had an interview published by The Interior Beauty Salon. Originally from Brazil, she is based in New York and does all her work at The Center for Book Arts communal shop. Her artist books are collected privately and institutionally.

Requested to produce a “100-words general statement”, she came up with:

Coherence and consistency are keywords for coping with my photographic memory. My autistic aspect struggles with the multifaceted stories of each encounter, the many versions of ourselves we create – which by themselves are harmless, until they start conflicting with one another. We edit events and words on auto-pilot, Science says.

Keeping tabs on hypocrisy can fill several books.

Incoherently and inconsistently I witness as we move on, leaving behind all-but-linear narratives – the many books within books of our selves. The method of my artistic inquiry is in the making of books. The artistic inquiry itself is the making of books.