At first glance, Amissa Anima: A Book of the Dead looks like a traditional hardback volume. Open the cover, however, and you find something unexpected: a kit for contacting the dead.
Nested within the unique artist’s book are an album of unsettling photographs, from which the user can select a spirit to summon; a set of bottled emotions that evoke the strong feelings said to link a person to the spirit world; and a Ouija board to facilitate the conversation. The bewitching work, from artist and bookbinder Stephanie Gibbs, invites “readers” to interact with its contents and pushes against the traditional boundaries of the book form.
The art piece is one of more than two dozen such wonders on display in The Book as Art, an exhibit opening this week in Doe Library’s Bernice Layne Brown Gallery. The exhibit, which runs through February, showcases artists’ books from the collections of UC Berkeley’s Art History/Classics and Environmental Design libraries.
Lynn Cunningham, the university’s art librarian and a co-curator of the exhibit, said the books span six decades, and represent a wide variety of physical characteristics and themes.
“They are beautiful works that can be appreciated for their aesthetic value,” she said. “But as you spend more time with the exhibit, you also begin to understand a little more about the history and evolution of the modern artists’ books genre.”