ist publishing has become the curator of the collective stand of Ukrainian art book publishers at the 75th Frankfurt Book Fair, which this year takes place on October 18-22. Guests of the event will be presented books by nine small Ukrainian publishers: Artbook, BOOKSHA, ist publishing, MOKSOP (Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography), Projector Publishing, Lviv Media Forum Publishing House, Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, Rodovid Press, and Osnovy Publishing.
All publications ‘record the current development of Ukrainian culture, and tell not only about the duration of artistic tradition in Ukraine but also about social, political, and historical processes in different periods’
In a comment for DTF Magazine, ist publishing co-founder Kateryna Nosko said that Ukrainian art books and books about art ‘lack a wider representation both in Ukraine and abroad’. Therefore, according to her, the team of the publishing house has two goals at the fair: to show how unconventional modern Ukrainian art books are, as well as to familiarize foreign audiences with them as much as possible, so that they would ‘visit the websites of Ukrainian publishing houses, order books, sign postcards, etc.’.
‘It can be best done in the format of a collective stand: so all the books presented on it enter into a dialog among themselves and invite the reader to active interaction — to look at, to leaf through the pages, to buy the rights to the edition in the national language or to take it to their library’, Kateryna believes.
ist publishing chose art books for their ‘universal language of images and symbols, which is intuitive to many readers, so that such publications often do not need to be translated’.
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‘Art books evoke a lot of emotions, offer different ways to interact with them. That is why they are also a good souvenir: it is very pleasant and easy to take such a book with you just as a memento or as a gift. A quality and interesting art book is something that everyone would like to have and show. It also has an impact on the image of the country whose book market it represents. That is why we need people abroad to see as many high-quality Ukrainian art books as possible’, Nosko explains.
Among the books that will be presented at the stand by ist publishing is the so-called museum series of Rodovid Press publishing house: ‘The Beast of War. Naїve Art from Ukraine’, ‘Janet Sobel: Wartime’, ‘Maria Prymachenko: Glory to Ukraine’, a book by Svitlana Oslavska and Anna Ilchenko called ‘Old Khata Book’, which explores the history of Ukrainian rural houses, and others.
Also on October 21, the discussion ‘I’m still ashamed to throw away food: how to deal with historical themes in art books’ will take place with the participation of artists and researchers Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva, journalist Maksym Eristavi and curator Alona Karavai and will be curated by ist publishing. The panelists will try to ‘find out where the boundary between the document and the artistic image in a book lies’.
The event will be moderated by Anastasia Leonova (ist publishing).
