Silvia Kolbowski

Silvia Kolbowski (born Buenos Aires, 1953) is an artist and writer whose practice has consistently engaged the politics of representation, desire, and institutional power. Working across photography, video, installation, and text, she was a significant figure in the New York art world of the 1980s and 1990s, contributing to the critical discourse around the Pictures Generation and its aftermath.

Her essay “All Things Being Equal,” published in ZG Magazine No. 12: Religion (New York, Fall 1984), appeared alongside contributions by Peter Halley, Michael Smith, Rosetta Brooks, and others in one of the decade’s sharpest independent art publications — a large printed support for the circulation of ideas that placed belief, image culture, power, and spectacle into direct contact.

The materials gathered here are printed documents of Kolbowski’s critical presence in the period: publications and ephemera that record the points at which her writing and practice entered the printed field.

  • Magazine cover, ZG Magazine No. 12: Religion, edited by Rosetta Brooks, New York, Fall 1984. Offset-printed, staple-bound periodical, 41.9 × 27.9 cm. Red ground. Upper left: bold black 'ZG' logotype. Upper right: black diagonal band — white bold sans-serif 'RELIGION'. Centre: black-and-white photograph of a television set showing a smiling male figure in white jacket raising one arm — televangelist or political figure; below the TV screen: small silhouetted figure with arms raised before a podium, flanked b Interior page, ZG Magazine No. 12: Religion, edited by Rosetta Brooks, New York, Fall 1984. Page 17. Black ground. Three overlapping black-and-white photographic reproductions of Hollywood studio portraits — upper left: blonde female figure in white fur, reclining, smiling; centre: dark-haired female figure in white gown, direct gaze, strong makeup; lower right: dark-haired female figure in profile, white ruffled neckline, upward gaze. White borders to each photograph, arranged diagonally overlapping. Lower

    ROSETTA BROOKS (ed.) — ZG Magazine No. 12: Religion, New York, Fall 1984

    ROSETTA BROOKS (ed.) — ZG Magazine No. 12: Religion, New York, Fall 1984