Artist As Theorist

A collection of incisive, wide-ranging essays penned by artists from 2009 to 2026Artist as Theorist brings together a selection of exemplary essays by artists from the past two decades, commissioned by e-flux. Working across different generations, geographies, and mediums, the artist-theorists in this volume engage with some of the defining conditions of contemporary life to produce an intellectual infrastructure for contemporary art. As theorists, these artists define key concepts that inform and are informed by their work on exhibitions, films, research platforms, institutions, and collective practices.Artists have always written; however, these essays reveal the emergence of a distinctive genre in recent years. Organized into six sections—defining contemporary art, the image and its unraveling, dark epistemologies, logics of persuasion, contested territories, and open futures—the essays are neither artist statements nor secondary commentaries on individual works. Rather, they comprise independent interventions into broader intellectual and political debates. By adopting a parallax view on the present, these artists propose alternate models of organizing artistic and social life while critiquing existing models. From defenses of the poor image to the secret history of psyops, this collection demonstrates how artistic practice is uniquely well-placed for recalibrating our understanding of the world.Contributors: Kader Attia, Julieta Aranda, Mari Bastashevski, James Bridle, Luis Camnitzer, Carolina Caycedo, Paul Chan, David Claerbout, Céline Condorelli, Aria Dean, Andrea Fraser, Liam Gillick, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Ho Rui An, Sohrab Hura, Iman Issa, Hiwa K, Metahaven, John Miller, Ahmet Öğüt, Ou Ning, Mimi Ọnụọha, Trevor Paglen, Walid Raad, Raqs Media Collective, Martha Rosler, Sean Snyder, Jonas Staal, Hito Steyerl, Oraib Toukan, Anton Vidokle, Mary Walling Blackburn, Eyal Weizman, Andrew Norman Wilson, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Dena Yago