What I am Reading Now...2023

edited by Hao, What I am Reading Now… (WIARN) is an ongoing monthly digital art publishing project which provides a critically engaged and supportive space for Black practitioners and practitioners of colour to share ideas, research, and their writing.

In 2023, 12 issues was published featuring both esteemed and emerging academics, artists, writers, designers, musicians, activist and museum directors including:
Sophia Al-Maria, Marie Hélène Pereira, Varsha Nair, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, layla-roxanne hill, Banji Chona, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye, Akwugo Emejulu, Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar, Maria Chávez.

Underscoring the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and considering the specific position of an art school gallery in relation to knowledge production and its dissemination, WIARN is a sustained context for original insights. Reflecting and embedding the ethos of the BLM movement and its capacity for social change through curatorial praxis, WIARN contributes to current research and thinking on decoloniality in contemporary cultural practices.

Informed by and enhancing Hao’s the rhizomatic approach in curatorial practice, WIARN foregrounds criticality, discursivity and trans-disciplinarity by bringing together academics, activists, artists, cultural workers and writers at various stages of their career. Connecting them with Cooper Gallery’s multiple publics both in Dundee and further afield, WIARN acts as a catalyst for discussion on the shared politicised condition of contemporary cultural studies and practices.

WIARN 2023 issues was featured in Art Monthly’s Selected Digital Resources throughout 2021 – 2023.