Omar Kholeif Books

A leading figure in the world of networked culture explores the artists and events that defined the mass medium of our time Since 1989, the year the World Wide Web was born, the art world has grappled with the rise of networked culture. This unprecedented survey of the artists and innovators in this area from 1989 to today is interwoven with the personal narrative of one of the leading voices on the digital world. In this book, Omar Kholeif, whose prolific career parallels the growth of the internet, tells the story of this mass medium and how it has fostered new possibilities for artists, both analog and digital. The book showcases work spanning a range of media from legendary artists including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Nam June Paik, Heather Phillipson, and Wu Tsang. Tracing the key artists and innovators from the emergence of browser-based art to the dawn of NFTs, this is a tale for the present and the future.

The way we see the world has changed drastically since NASA released the?blue marble? image of the earth taken by Apollo 17 in 1972. No longer a placid slow-moving orb, the world is now perceived as a hothouse of activity and hyper-connectivity that cannot keep up with its inhabitants. The internet has collectively bound human society, replacing the world as the network of all networks. In Goodbye, World! Looking at Art in the Digital Age, writer and curator Omar Kholeif traces the birth of a culture propagated but also consumed by this digitized network. Has the internet transformed the way we see and relate to images? How has the field of perception been altered by evolving technologies, pervasive distribution, and our interaction with screens? How have artists working in diverse contexts, from eBay auctions to augmented reality, created new ways of emoting that are determined by these technologies? Focusing on a cultural and artistic landscape that has taken shape since the year 2000, Kholeif aims to put into context a new language for seeing, feeling, and being that has emerged through post-millennial technologies, and argues for a nuanced understanding of the post-digital condition. Taking cues from John Berger?s Ways of Seeing and Alvin Toffler?s Future Shock, this book?part memoir, part critical analysis?should prove essential for anyone interested in the changing world of the internet

Exploring the life and work of Sonia Balassanian, this anthology highlights the experiences of queer, non-binary, and female-identifying artists often overlooked in art literature. Dr. Omar Kholeif presents a personal narrative that combines poetry, memoir, and historical context to delve into Balassanian's impact on the New York art scene. The collection encourages readers to envision art beyond traditional boundaries, challenging dominant narratives and inviting a fresh perspective on artistic expression and identity.

Exploring the artistic journey of Magda Stawarska, this critical biography traverses diverse locations, from Istanbul to Venice and Zanzibar. Over nearly two decades, Stawarska has engaged with themes of memory, history, and listening through various mediums, including sound and performance. Her unique approach resembles that of a flaneur, crafting a rhythmic score from urban landscapes to reveal layered narratives. Author Omar Kholeif presents this travelogue as a field guide to her practice, highlighting the intricate connection between visual and auditory experiences. The book concludes with insights from Turner-Prize winner Lubaina Himid.

This publication celebrates the Antwerp-based, Nigerian-born artist Otobong Nkanga, who explores cultural and historical conflicts as well as the exploitation of Earth's natural resources.

Artists and writers examine the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in online and offline life in the post-digital age. Every day we are bombarded by information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in our online and offline lives. How does the never-ending flow of data affect our powers of perception and decision making? This richly illustrated and boldly designed collection of essays and artworks investigates visual culture in the post-digital age. The essays, by such leading cultural thinkers as Douglas Coupland and W. J. T. Mitchell, consider topics that range from the future of money to the role of art in a post-COVID-19 world; from mental health in the digital age to online grieving; and from the mediation of visual culture to the thickening of the digital sphere. Accompanying an ambitious exhibition conceived by the Sharjah Art Foundation and volume editor and curator Omar Kholeif, the book is a work of art and a labor of love, emulating the labyrinthine corridors of the exhibition itself. Created by a group of writers, artists, designers, photographers, and publishers, Art in the Age of Anxiety calls upon us to consider what our collective future will be and how humanity will adapt to it.

"Moving image is among the most significant expanded fields at contemporary art. This anthology examines the rising phenomenon of moving image practice in recent art and theory, tracing its genealogies in experimental cinema and video, body art, performance, site-specific art and installation from the 1960s onward. Contextualizing new developments made possible by advances in digital and networked technology, it locates contemporary art centred on the moving image within a global framework."

This cutting-edge book is the essential guide to what’s next in contemporary art, and to the visionaries who are making it happen. Traditional histories of art have often been confined to a western European framework. But with the birth of contemporary museum culture, the proliferation of art fairs and biennials in regions far and wide, and the advent of digital technologies, new global networks have emerged, fostering a new world map of art, and paving the way for the art of tomorrow. How do we engage with contemporary art in this global, ever-developing context? Senior Curator Omar Kholeif—a respected voice in contemporary art criticism—surveys the most influential figures and works in a series of concise, accessible entries. The Artists Who Will Change the World is an introductory field guide to what the most urgent contemporary artists—Amalia Ulman, Lynette Yiadom Boakye, Hito Steyerl, and others—are producing worldwide. Whether engaging with the aesthetics of technology or the fluid world of politics, their work will influence generations of artists and art lovers to come.