2nd Floor Balcony
BPL Presents with Youth & Family Services Present Bibliobandido Bites Brooklyn!
Bibliobandido–the story eater–is coming to Brooklyn, and he is hungry! We need your help to feed this ravenous book bandit. You can find him at Brooklyn Public Library branches this summer, where librarians will facilitate storycrafting workshops and ensure we can nourish Bibliobandido. Beware–and stay tuned for clues of his whereabouts.
Bibliobandido is a public artwork and literacy movement by artist Marisa Morán Jahn, Brooklyn Public Library’s 2022 Katowitz Radin Artist-in-Residence. The project began twelve years ago as a collaboration between Jahn and the community of El Pital, in rural Honduras. According to the legend they created, Bibliobandido is a masked bandit who eats stories and playfully pesters little kids to feed him stories they’ve written.
As Bibliobandido’s fame eventually rivaled that of Santa Claus, the project grew to encompass thousands of young people across 19 participating Honduran communities. Bibliobandido workshops also spread to thousands of youth in North and Central America, taking root in institutions ranging from the Seattle Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Studio Museum in Harlem, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, and additional universities, festivals, schools, and museums. Link to the project page
Accompanying an exhibition in Central Library’s Youth Wing and 2nd Floor Balcony Cases, Bibliobandido Bites Brooklyn! is a Brooklyn-wide offering with programming at various BPL branches to be announced soon. In 2023, Bibliobandido will become a film directed/produced by Marisa Morán Jahn and Benjamin Murray.
Program:
Artist Talk with Marisa Morán Jahn.
October 4, 6:30pm, Central Library, Dweck Center . Register HERE
About the Artist
Marisa Morán Jahn’s art and films redistribute power, “exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice”(ArtForum). Codesigned with youth, new immigrants, and working families, Jahn’s work has engaged millions through venues such as the Tribeca Film Festival, Obama’s White House, the United Nations, PBS, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, Univision Global, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Her key works include Bibliobandido, a story-eating bandit whose fame in Honduras rivals Santa Claus; two mobile studios (NannyVan, CareForce One) and a
Sundance-supported PBS film amplifying the voices of caregivers; and Carehaus, the U.S.’s first care-based co-housing project designed with architect Rafi Segal. She has taught at Teachers College at Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (her alma mater),and Parsons/The New School where she is the Director of Integrated Design. In 2022, she was a Fellow at Sundance and MIT. marisajahn.com @marisa_jahn
Bibliobandido Bites Brooklyn! is organized by Cora Fisher, BPL Curator of Visual Arts, and guest curated by Amy Rosenblum-Martín.
About Amy Rosenblum-Martín
Formerly a staff curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Bronx Museum, she has also worked for the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MCA Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), and other museums. Her exhibition Ana Mendieta: Thinking About Children’s Thinking (2017) at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum in Harlem was an Artforum Critic’s Pick. Currently, she is curating the large-scale survey Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits by John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres at the Bronx Museum.
About the Katowitz Radin Artist in Residence Program at Brooklyn Public Library
Through the Katowitz Radin Artist in Residence program, Brooklyn Public Library supports emerging and established artists to meaningfully engage with BPL’s collections, programs, and services as a way to expand their art making practices. The program began in 2014 with renowned jazz vocalist Cilla Owens. Since then children’s illustrator Pat Cummings, painter Steve Keene, visuals artist Molly Crabapple, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Mary Mattingly have each been awarded the residency, which includes performances or exhibitions and adjacent public programs such as talks and artist-led-workshops.
Preview the Exhibit
