Jennifer Abel of Tara Books send me a PDF version of Fingerprint, by Andrea Anastasio.
When designer and artist Andrea Anastasio visited the US some years ago, he was fingerprinted (like everyone else) by the airport immigration authorities. This moment — both banal and ominous — stayed with him until it worked its way into his art. The result is Fingerprint, a playful and provoking tale that celebrates resistance to state surveillance and control. The artist's fingerprints, letter-pressed onto the pages of a book, create progressively complex patterns and sequences, transporting the fingerprint from the world of forensics and law into the freeing world of art and imagination.
This is a timely and many-layered visual tale that is both a work of art and a political communiqué. An accompanying essay by historian and political activist V. Geetha points to those suggestive instances when people across cultures and nations have resisted fingerprinting, asserting their right to existence while fighting all attempts to foreclose their identities. And each copy is an original letterpressed handmade edition – thereby preserving the originality of both the fingerprints and printing method itself.
Fingerprint, by Andrea Anastasio
