Nneoma Njoku, a first year MFA student in the graphic design program in the VCU School of the Arts, will serve as the 2025 Book Artist in Residence in Special Collections and Archives. 

In her application materials, she describes herself as passionate about “researching subjugated and lost histories and using book design as a tool for people to engage with these histories.“

During the spring semester, she researched 20th century representations of Africa in Western visual cultures. “As I researched, I began to perceive the anthropological books as a site and technology. They were virtual sites where people first encountered the African subject, whose image and culture were distorted in order to allow for the smooth functioning of colonialism. The books also served as technologies of capture. The cover and binding served as a cage that captured the African and crystallized her distortion on the page. The grid functioned as a tour guide through which the reader could knowledge-make about the African as a nonhuman form.”

Drawn into the world of artists’ books, “I was fascinated with their capacity to knowledge-make through experimental, nonlinear reading experiences. Thus, I began to make artists’ books about black and queer histories to push people to resense such cultures, decolonize knowledge-making and exhume my own subjectivity from the grasps of Western logic.”

For her residency, Njoku hopes to follow her interest in telling stories of hidden historical figures. Specifically, she is exploring creating an artist book about Dorothy Ashby, a trailblazing jazz artist and cultural worker. “Though she made an undeniable impact in music, accessible scholarship on her life is scarce. The artist book will use archival material to visually remember her within the contexts of jazz history, faulty archives, and the legacy of other Black women lost in the sands of time.” 

She sees The Book Arts Residency as “the perfect opportunity to advance this project.” She looks forward to exploring the Book Art Collection that she says “offers a breadth of artists' books to conduct intensive research on materials, binding, and layouts. I hope to use this research to experiment with techniques that will help me create more complex, visually impactful books as well as skillfully animate the histories I seek to share.”

In its second year, The Book Art Residency was launched as a proof of concept to explore how a VCU student immersed in the collection might be inspired to produce art in the library environment.  

The Book Art Residency takes place during the summer, during which the resident will have access to the vast VCU’s Book Art Collection and other archival collections, receive support from libraries staff and create an edition of a work inspired by archival collections.  During the residence, the artist is required to produce an artist book. The resident receives a stipend and a budget to produce the book. 

The Book Art Residency is one element in the planned expansion of Special Collections and Archives. A fundraising priority for VCU Libraries is to secure support to expand the space on the fourth floor of Cabell Library. This will include much-needed expansion of the areas where valuable artifacts, artwork and rare materials are secured in a climate-controlled, locked section. 

Part of the expansion plans include construction of a Book Arts Lab. The envisioned lab will offer art studio quality worktables, an exhibit space, specialized book producing equipment, storage space for works in progress and infrastructure for teaching (drop down screens, cameras and other technology). The new lab will transform VCU’s world class Book Art Collection into a more robust teaching collection by providing examples and techniques to inspire researchers, artists, and students.

For Nneoma Njoku, who already has a robust resume for a student, the residency will be one more significant professional experience. Academically, she holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Vassar College and received the departmental Akira Ouchi Graphic Design scholarship. She has experience in programming and designing materials for gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria. She is serving as a graphic design intern with The Anderson and was instrumental in the inaugural MFA thesis exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art. She has been invited to show her book at the LA Art Book Fair and the Jersey Book Art Fair and has been involved with various Richmond projects including a book launch and a film festival. She is in the process of launching her own micropress–Resense Press–that publishes artists’ books and printed matter. 

“There has been an explosive interest in artists’ books because people are seeking out new frameworks and formats to knowledge-make about the world. History has shown that new visual cultures beget new social orders, so I believe artists’ books will serve an important role in creating a more just reality. It will be an honor to develop the skillset required to meaningfully contribute to this movement through the Book Arts Residency.”