Futurity Library: Disobedient Artists' Books in the Postbook Age
On view: April 25–July 26, 2026
Opening Reception: May 15, 6–8 pm (RSVP today!)
The Bay Area has long been fertile ground for technological innovation and artistic experimentation—a fitting origin for an exhibition that takes the artist book as its site of inquiry.
Futurity Library: Disobedient Artists' Books in the Postbook Age frames the artist book as an evolutionary object: a form capacious enough to absorb new technologies, shed familiar structures, and persistently question its own conventions.
Curator bex ya yolk brings together artists working across a provocative range of materials and methods, from the handmade to the high-tech, each pushing on the boundaries of what a book can structurally, conceptually, and experientially be. Spanning material innovation and conceptual provocation, from 3D-printed structures to works that abandon the codex altogether, this exhibition collectively asks what the book is, and what it might yet become.
Opening Reception
Join us for the Futurity Library opening reception!
May 15 from 6–8 pm, with remarks at 7. Light refreshments will be served.
Related Workshops
We are excited to welcome Futurity Library artist and visiting instructor Myungah Hyon for two workshops on innovative book structures.
Transformative Book Forms: Never-Ending Books and Kaleidocycles
Saturday, May 17 from 10 AM to 4 PM
This workshop presents playful and innovative book forms that change shape through movement and interaction. Students will explore simple paper techniques that transform flat sheets into interactive three-dimensional objects.
Waterfall Flip Book: Movement and Sequential Image
Saturday, May 16, 2026 from 10 AM to 4 PM
This is the perfect workshop for students interested in interactive, dynamic book forms; utilizing the mechanics of a flip book, students will translate a sequence of images into movement through touch.
About the Curator
bex ya yolk (they/them) is a visual artist, graphic designer, bookmaker, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk received a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a concentration in Book Arts as a full merit scholar. yolk is the founder of THUNGRY — a practice, publishing initiative, and artists' book bindery complicating traditional ways of book building and semantics through experimentation and queering praxis. yolk utilizes the confines and structure of the codex, fundamental principles in design, and exploratory methodologies in sculpture to activate, interrogate, speculate, and disrupt what we've come to understand qualifies a Book and whom it may serve.
With a generative, multi-year research practice rooted in reproductive rights, histories, and design, yolk focuses on the philosophy of "the maternal" as a theology, a practice, and a logic to live by. As socio-political landscapes evolve in regards to what is acceptable, legal, and safe for AFAB and queer people, yolk interrogates and boldly addresses what could come of our collective futurity. Through sculptural practices, independent publishing, and the book as an art object, yolk mines subgenres of the maternal complex— including care work, abortion access activism, reproductive justice, health care disparities in the U.S., and container technologies — making visible the intersectionalities between the book in form and the bodies this research pertains.
