Sming Sming Books (2024)

21/07/2024

thank you for bringing so much joy and humor—even when (or maybe especially when) doing a tarot reading for america 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

the last day of is tmr! sunday 11-5pm . come by and pick up a deck for your own insight and preparation~

19/07/2024

is open today & sat 11-6; sunday 11-5! ✨
will be doing a live reading with The Evanesced [Tarot Deck] sat at 1pm in the lounge. 1275 Minnesota St.

30/05/2024

books are excuses to gather people and what a great excuse this was. .studio moderated by . each shared their contribution to the book Blood, Sweat, and Time: Emerging Perspectives on and . they discussed community & collaboration, the space that’s created in being in a state of perpetual emergence, continuing the work of those before you, and more. the book is now at bookstore. pick up a copy there or thru link in bio~

Edited by Luke Williams, Blood, Sweat, and Time: Emerging Perspectives on Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell brings together a collection of creative and scholarly contributions formulated in response to two exhibitions held at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José: Mildred Howard: The Time and Space of Now and Adrian Burrell: Sugarcane and Lightning pt 3. Consolidated around the capacious themes of “blood,” “sweat,” and “time,” this collection intensifies the thematic conversation initiated by these exhibitions and probes several critical questions: How does the long durée of history inform the contemporary moment of Black art? How might gender and sexual identities inform time as an inflection point? How does labor appear or disappear in the art world? What messages should we collectively share with those coming behind us?

Foreword by Zoë Latzer and introduction by Luke Williams. Contributors include: Selam Bekele, Elena Gross, Shaquille Heath, Benjamin L. Jones, Deborah LeFalle, Charles H. Lee, Aaron Samuel Mulenga, Margarita Lila Rosa, Delphine Sims, and Luke Williams.

18/05/2024

bookstore photodump pt. 2

17/05/2024

photodump of bookstores in rome pt. 1

29/04/2024

so apparently someone was selling & ’s book at a recent art book fair in boston for $80 claiming it was sold out!! 💀👀 idk who it is but we wanted to let you to know this is def not the case. we can’t really control what ppl do with books after they buy it but there are plenty of copies left via sming sming’s webstore. pls don’t get swiped~

otherwise thanks for picking up a copy directly from this wknd and ❤️ to community for looking out!

27/04/2024

not at ’s this year because i’m trying my best not to burn out. 🥲 still, i wish i was there to “do the rounds,” hug my book pals, pizza party, and physically sign this petition for to commit to PACBI. ❤️📚🔥 from my dining table.

10/04/2024

new book drop 🌝 dispatches between & . preorder now thru smingsming.com or pick up a copy when Alice Wang: We Are Extraterrestrial opens on May 4! ✨

09/04/2024

next week~ and i chat books and publishing at mills 📚💕

thurs, april 18, 5:30-7:30pm

20/02/2024

last 2 copies left of ’s Restored/Access on smingsming.com. 👀 thank you for supporting this project! few copies left & .

combines recent photos with archival materials from his uncle’s collection on Allensworth—the first town in California to be founded, financed, and governed by Black people. Founded in 1908, Allensworth is part of a long legacy of independent and autonomous communities created by revolutionaries and people escaping enslavement.

10/02/2024

happy lunar new year! 💚💚💚 to all my fellow dragons 🐉🌧️🏔️☁️🐉

this is one of my fave spreads from a children’s book about the great race of the 12 zodiacs. the dragon comes in 5th place despite being a badass mythical flying creature bcuz they stopped to help out a village from drought, bringing about much-needed rain. 🌧️ i have always loved this story, being a dragon, not giving af about the race, and instead channeling that chaotic good energy to bring about change. here’s to a year of transformation. 🐲

08/02/2024

Couldn’t be more thrilled to announce that Blood, Sweat, and Time will be out next month!

Edited by , Blood, Sweat, and Time: Emerging Perspectives on Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell brings together a collection of creative and scholarly contributions formulated in response to two exhibitions held at the —Mildred Howard: The Time and Space of Now and Adrian Burrell: Sugarcane and Lightning pt 3. Consolidated around the capacious themes of “blood,” “sweat,” and “time,” this collection intensifies the thematic conversation initiated by these exhibitions and probes several critical questions: How does the long durée of history inform the contemporary moment of Black art? How might gender and sexual identities inform time as an inflection point? How does labor appear or disappear in the art world? What messages should we collectively share with those coming behind us?

Foreword by and introduction by . Contributors include: .studio , Deborah LeFalle, and .

Co-published by + . Preorder thru link in bio or at smingsming.com.

02/02/2024

Launching tonight SF

Friday, February 2, 2024, 6–9 pm
The Fugue of the Cicada Songs
An evening of sound performances organized in collaboration with Cone Shape Top, on the occasion of the launch of de montañas submarinas el fuego hace islas: Reader Volume Two.

de montañas submarinas el fuego hace islas [from the underwater mountains fire makes islands] Reader Volume Two is a bilingual English and Spanish reader, edited by curator Yina Jiménez Suriel, and co-published by KADIST and Sming Sming Books, with the support of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of California, Berkeley. de montañas explores the concept of freedom through sensory experiences, alternate and altered realities, and interspecies relationships between human and non-human entities, using the island as a important reference point for imagination beyond the world in which we live. With texts by Dénètem Touam Bona, Félix Servio Ducoudray, Yina Jiménez Suriel, Ailton Krenak, Marilia Lourerio, José Maceda, Ariana Nuala, Suely Rolnik, and Jo-ey Tang, de montañas includes a constellation of voices that address the interconnection between the geological, perceptual, temporal, sonic, poetic, social and political forces.

02/01/2024

preorders of bloodlines have been mailed! thank you for supporting this project! there are a number of forthcoming events with metail yaniv. details can be found at https://communitiesofmemory.com/pages/events

meital yaniv: bloodlines book launches & readings

Fri, Jan 5, 6pm — SF
reading & conversation with meital yaniv
@ Et al. Books (2831 Mission St)

Sat, Jan 6, 4-6pm — Santa Cruz reading & conversation with taisha paggett & meital yaniv
@ The Greenhouse Project (152 Farm Rd)

Wed, Jan 10, 12pm PT — online Bloodlines, Disillusionment and Return: Can They Meet?
conversation with Gabor Maté and meital yaniv
hosted by The Memory and Resistance Laboratory @ UCR

Tues, Jan 16, 5pm PT — online Disturbing the Lines: an invitation for Israelis and Jews  by Israelis and Jews
panel discussion with Hadar Cohen, Sasha Perry, Asaf Calderon, and meital yaniv
hosted by Decolonizing Humanism(?) Programming Stream  @ the UCR Center for Ideas and Society

Thurs, Jan 18, 10am PT — online
conversation with Sulaiman Khatib and meital yaniv moderated by Rae Abileah
hosted by SAND (Science and Nonduality)

17/12/2023

winter is approaching. if you haven’t already emailed/called your reps in the last 72 days to advocate for permanent ceasefire and end the seige on gaza, please call today and daily. it takes two minutes. link in bio.

sming sming books is run as a sole proprietorship which means that all expenses and income are tied to my own personal finances and choices. i support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, and have been weighing over the most productive way for me to participate. it’s of little consequence for me to boycott businesses i already don’t buy from, so instead, i will be focusing my efforts on divestments.

my primary source of income is from my job at stanford, where i just joined this summer. earlier this month, stanford daily reported that the university received a “failing ‘D’ grade in human rights due diligence for its investments.” my salary from stanford’s endowment likely comes from profits made from human rights violations. without the due diligence report and transparency, we have no way of fully knowing. coming in, i 100% knew i was going to have contend with my own ethics on an ongoing basis, but i am very much driven (perhaps by delusion or sheer curiosity) to discover the limits of institutional change. so here we go. if you’re a colleague or student reading this and are already involved in applying pressure to the university to divest in weapons and military support, can you please reach out? i’m still such a noob on campus and would love to find more community around this. thanks.

over the winter break, i will be performing a full self-audit to review of every one of my accounts, as well as any forthcoming participation and partnerships with other orgs and events, with the commitment in divesting in companies and organizations with financial ties to the israeli occupation.

thanks to all the artists, publishers, and cultural workers leading the way. it takes me a while to process everything, but all your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.

16/12/2023

2023 in books! 💘📚🐛

thank you to every artist and writer for trusting me with your work! most of these books were made possible thanks to the alt-ex grant, and partners this year and orgs 🙏🏼❤️✨

15/12/2023

Artists’ Books as Prompts for Discourse closes tomorrow sat. dec. 16!! thank you to camilo and CBA team fo taking care and sharing these 40 books from the last 6 yrs of sming sming books 🐛📚💘 thx to everyone who has been on this journey, esp fron very beginning. yknow who you are. 🥲 i’m still amazed that these books have found their way to so many homes and libraries around the world. 💫📚

08/12/2023

friday 12/8 at 3:30pm PST / 6:30pm EST, please join me on Zoom via for an artist talk about the discursive power of artists’ books. link to register in bio!

*

To publish is to make public. What do artists’ books make public? How do they engage a public? Where do they travel? Where do they end up? What conversations do they spark? What ideas do they push or pull from a work of art? What do they perform? How do they continue to speak across time and generations? Artists’ Books as Prompts for Discourse considers the life of a book after its making and how through its distribution and circulation, a book is activated.

This exhibition attempts to trace the discursive reverberations of the books that have been published and produced through Bay Area-based publishing studio, Sming Sming Books. Founded in 2017 by artist-publisher Vivian Sming, Sming Sming Books works in close collaboration with artists whose works and ideas inform design, material, and printing choices. The studio is committed to promoting critical discourse, advancing cultural equity, and creating alternative sites of knowledge production through publications and public programs.

06/12/2023

i know.. i’ve got books coming out of my ears. 🙉📚 here’s one last one for the year (i think), featuring the work of Jason Powell-Smith, co-published with ! excited to share this w you all tomorrow thurs 12/7 art book bazaar 1-8pm. free & open to public. all the way.

Bay Area artist Jason Powell-Smith walks, bikes, rides BART and AC Transit, and occasionally will board an Amtrak train from Fremont where he lives, to NIAD Art Center in Richmond where he creates. He will ride BART to different stations just to see the station, or he jumps on a bus to San Francisco after being in the studio all day just because he likes to ride the bus in the city and watch life out the window. Jason takes in the Bay Area, and Jason Powell-Smith’s Bay Area is his Bay Area story.

A proud Bay Area artist, sports fan, and news watcher, Powell-Smith’s prolific, multi-media art practice is informed by his journeys and experiences of the Bay. He places himself and others in the landscapes and experiences he witnesses. As a watcher, storyteller and commentator, he is non-invasive in his gathering of experience, yet wryly critical in his recreations. His work has developed over the years in different ways as his context changes and expands. His visual narrative is rendered through printmaking, photo editing from found photographs, textile design, painting, and drawing.

Jason’s VS Series is classic in its simplicity, complex in its humor and meaning. North VS South, Richmond VS Oakland, AC Transit VS MUNI, Powell-Smith acutely tackles many of the arenas in which our competitive nature battles, yet the battles are fully inclusive. Everyone is welcome to enter the wrestling ring, nothing is off limits in the ongoing VS battle. Jason’s work asks what team are you on? What would you rather? Who would you want in the Bay Area with you? Everyone is invited into his world and to Jason Powell-Smith’s Bay Area.

30/11/2023

decks are here! thanks to everyone who preordered! they are on their way to you 🚀✨

The Evanesced [Tarot Deck] can be used as an oracle deck for full tarot reading. This deck has 78 cards and includes The Evansced [Tarot Deck Guidebook], which contains descriptions for each card, as well as:
Exercises for retrieval of self
Mantras
Sonic suggestions
Healing crystal guides and index

28/11/2023

been working on some new books with a collectively run imprint . will be sharing more about this soon.

meanwhile pls join us on friday, dec. 1 at 10am PST for a reading from meital yaniv’s forthcoming book, . zoom link is in bio.

bloodlines is an epic and intimate dive into the israeli apartheid regime from the perspective of an ex-israeli/ex-zionist soldier. Born into a sephardic and ashkenazi lineage of in/famous war heroes and pillars for the state of israel, meital yaniv traces their paternal family narrative from surviving the Holocaust of the second world war to migrating to Palestine and their subsequent indoctrination as zionist colonizers and defenders of the state of israel. yaniv directs our attention to the cycles of history and how genocide not only repeats but grows monstrously in the crevices of state belonging.

27/11/2023

hope to see some of you before the end of the year 🩵📚

Leymusoom Voyage
Sun, Dec 3, 2-4pm
Mills College Art Museum

Enjoy an artist talk from Heesoo Kwon, along with collaborators Karen Cheung, SFMOMA Curatorial Associate, Media Arts, and Leymusoom Giftshop publisher Vivian Sming of Sming Sming Books. With performances from Korean drumming group 끼리 끼리 (Kkiri Kkiri); artist and experimental musician Breno Aragon; and artist collective, Dong-Ji Collective, who will perform in honor of their late member, composer and Mills Music MFA Julie Moon.

Small Press Book Bazaar!
Thurs, Dec 7, 1-8pm
SFMOMA (Free Thursday)

Artist Talk: Artists’ Books as Prompts for Discourse
Fri, Dec 8, 3:30pm PST/6:30pm EST
Center for Book Arts via Zoom

Please join us on December 8 at 6:30pm at Center for Book Arts for a virtual event in conjunction with the exhibition Artists’ Books as Prompts for Discourse.

links in bio

27/11/2023

interview with on I See More Clearly in the Dark, now up on few excerpts here / full piece in bio >>

“YZ
The space of darkness, the forest, is very prominent in the novel; it feels like a character.

VH
Yes, the psychic space of the forest is introduced early on. The first chapter alternates between the perspectives of the protagonist, who is hiding out in a hotel, and a creature living in a dark, primordial forest. I tried to write from the subjectivity of a possibly primordial or post-human creature experiencing the forest’s resplendent darkness with all its senses.”

…

“VH
All the referenced texts are there in the bibliography for people who want to read more. But I don’t think it’s necessary to read them to understand what’s going on—they’re more like indications of the character’s internal weather. Whenever I find out what someone else is reading, it tells me something about them and their mind. I’m a huge fan of reading as a way to embody another’s experience. My protagonist reads as a way to return to herself, to her shadows. Even in isolation, separated from her lover, she finds a sense of connection through reading. The texts almost have bodies…”

16/11/2023

postponed my nov. 17 talk in solidarity with . there are a number of ways to participate in friday’s global shutdown! i can talk about books any other day, but time’s up to apply all the pressure we can. links in bio 👀 ceasefire immediately!

13/11/2023

and i have been working on this project since 2020. it’s now finally available for preorder, arriving this december. ❤️

The Evanesced [Tarot Deck] is inspired by The Evanesced Series, an expansive body of work channeled by Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle a.k.a. Olomidara Yaya. Through 100+ drawings and paintings that Hinkle/Yaya calls un-portraits and a suit of site-specific performances, she/they are creating a body of work that interrogates the erasure of Black womxn historically and presently. This deck and its creation stand in solidarity with various intersections of what it means to be femme, especially Black and femme, and is in conversation with the movement. All un-portraits featured in the deck are from The Evanesced: The Untouchables (2020) commissioned for the traveling exhibition The Black Index, curated by Bridget R. Cooks.

The Evanesced [Tarot Deck] can be used as an oracle deck for full tarot reading. This deck has seventy-eight cards and includes The Evansced [Tarot Deck Guidebook], which contains descriptions for each card, as well as:
-Exercises for retrieval of self
-Mantras
-Sonic suggestions
-Healing crystal guides and index

03/11/2023

announcing the sming sming tiny tote! available on its own or as part of our artists’ writings bundle. 🐯📚 links in bio~

23/10/2023

’s Leymusoom Giftshop complete set now available in its fully glory. Link in bio 💫

Heesoo Kwon (b. 1990, Seoul, South Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. Positioning herself as an artist, activist, archivist, anthropologist, and religious figure, Kwon builds feminist utopias in the digital realm that liberate one from personal, familial, and historical trauma rooted in patriarchy.

Central to her practice and substantial bodies of work is Leymusoom, an autobiographical feminist religion she initiated in 2017 as a form of personal resistance against misogyny and an ever-evolving framework for investigating her family histories. Kwon utilizes technologies such as digital archiving, 3D scanning, and animation as her ritualistic and shamanistic tools to regenerate her woman ancestors’ lives without constraints of time and space, and to q***r her past, present, and utopian dreams.

Leymusoom Giftshop is an installation that takes the form of a religious giftshop, on view in Bay Area Now 9 at YBCA (October 6, 2023–May 5, 2024). As an artist’s book, Leymusoom Giftshop includes products from the installation, along with an exclusive set of prayer cards:

1 Leymusoom Universe (overview of Leymusoom’s lineage)
1 Leymusoom Bible written by Kazumi Chin and Heesoo Kwon (origins and development of the Leymusoom religion)
4 Leymusoom School prayer booklets, written by Karen Cheung, Kathryn Cua, Shaelyn Hanes & Katherine Jemima Hamilton, and Zoë Latzer.
10 postcards (from the Premolt series)
6 prayer cards
1 lenticular bookmark (from the Leymusoom Garden series)

11/10/2023

this sat, oct. 14, 5-8pm! i’ll be in convo w starting at 6pm at uc berkeley about his book Brown Eyes from Russell Street! there will be free conchas, drinks, and posters~ books will be for sale 📚🐛 presented by . ✨ come by!

rsvp thru link in bio.

06/10/2023

thank youuuu for coming out to last night 🥰🥲 infinite thanks to camilo for this invitation and all your work on putting this together. 🙏🏼😽💘📚🌸

just a few pix from last night: photos within photos, gushing over giftshop, 40 books made in the last 6 years 🥲, an installation/book-in-progress of reader containing essays, conversations, reviews, etc. related to each book, and some silliness~p

“Artists’ Books as Prompts for Discourse” will be open thru dec. 16! there’s also a fantastic show up “Off-Register: Publishing Experiments by Women Artists in Latin America, 1960-1990” curated by Mela Dávila which i’m thrilled to have these books be in conversation with 🌿✨

04/10/2023

Saturday, October 14 at 5pm~ will be speaking / at UC Berkeley about his work and book Brown Eyes from Russell Street. RSVP thru link in bio. 🌿

2547 Channing Way Berkeley, CA 94704

* * *

Join the Democracy + Media Lab for our upcoming event, "A Book Talk with Héctor Muñoz-Guzmán," featuring his latest work, "Brown Eyes From Russell Street," published by Sming Sming Books, and moderated by Vivian Sming.
This event offers a wonderful opportunity to delve deeper into the profound influence of art on our identity and cultural surroundings. Héctor Muñoz-Guzmán, a third-generation artist based in Oakland, draws inspiration from his dual Mexican and American heritage, familiar street imagery, perceptions of race, and the role of Catholicism viewed through the lens of colonization. Héctor creates vibrant scenes that simultaneously evoke his early childhood memories, Mexican history, and aspirations for the future. His masterful use of saturated colors captures the lively atmospheres of his childhood in South Berkeley, California, and the ancestral beauty of Tepatitlan, Jalisco, Mexico. His art not only reflects cultural identity but also serves as a profound reflection of his family's history and his upbringing in South Berkeley.
During the event, we will showcase all the captivating artwork and more from Héctor's book, "Brown Eyes from Russell Street," accompanied by an engaging conversation with the artist himself.
We are delighted to inform you that this event is free and open to the public, and we will provide light refreshments for all attendees.
This event is organized by The Tribunal Project, a research working group within the Critical Perspectives on Democracy + Media Lab at the Latinx Research Center, University of California, Berkeley.

Sming Sming Books

21/07/2024

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