Nora Turato: Govern Me Harder

The third title in the Clarion series features the Amsterdam-based artist Nora Turato and her vibrant enamel panels that magnify the omnipresence of text, design, and speech in our contemporary culture.

"Meticulous as Helen and tricky as Odysseus, the artist invites us first to misread the slick surfaces and humor of her works as effortless, then forces us to attend to the laborious practices they belie, the histories and possibilities of that effort." --Art in America

Originally trained as a graphic designer, Nora Turato adapts text to subvert and create messages. Although many of Turato's performances and works appear to be drafted by free association, she meticulously and thoughtfully edits them to evoke a sense of alluring confusion. In three signature murals with a bespoke typeface, Turato addresses the inundation of language, typography, and graphic design in our contemporary culture, whether in the news, on social media, or in advertisements.

Published on the occasion of Turato's widely popular exhibition govern me harder at 52 Walker, this publication features texts by Ebony L. Haynes and Anna Kats. Serving as an extension of the exhibition, performance scripts by the artist are also included in this publication. As described in The Brooklyn Rail, "In the slick sea of graphic smoothness and language lost from meaning, something has still been irrefutably made."

Author: Nora Turato, Anna Kats
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: David Zwirner Books/52 Walker
Published: 09/12/2023
Series: Clarion
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.00h x 7.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781644230862

About the Author
Nora Turato was born in 1991 in Zagreb, Croatia, and presently lives and works in Amsterdam. The artist received her BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, in 2013, and her MFA from Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 2016.

Ebony L. Haynes is a writer and curator from Toronto. She is based in New York, where she is a director at David Zwirner. Haynes is a visiting curator and critic at the Yale School of Art in the painting and printmaking class of 2021. She also runs an online "school" that offers free professional practice classes to Black students worldwide.

Anna Kats is a PhD candidate in the History of Architecture at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, where her research considers the global proliferation of socialist art and architectural production after World War II.