A LUMA project curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Produced by the Luma Foundation and conceived by curator and Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, the book features all 153 original posters created by the 127 artists invited to participate in IT'S URGENT!, an open-form touring exhibition that started in 2019 in Denmark's Heartland Festival hosted by Kunsthal Charlottenborg, during the election campaign for the European Parliament.
Following the successful presentation in Denmark, IT'S URGENT! transformed to become more complex, including a greater number of artists. From summer 2019 to early 2020, its multiple narratives enlivened the exhibition programme of the Luma Foundation at Luma Westbau in Zurich, Switzerland. The exhibition travelled to Luma Arles, France in June 2020, where all the posters associated with the project were shown and over the months of July, August, and September 2020, new posters were commissioned and were displayed alongside the existing ones.
IT'S URGENT! aims to make the artists' ideas available to all, opening them up to new audiences and inserting them into public life and the community at large. Artists from all over the world responded to this invitation to address the most pressing themes of our times—ecology, inequality, common future, solidarity, anti-racism and social justice had a profound presence in this vast ensemble of creative endeavour. In the words of the celebrated French-Lebanese artist and poet Etel Adnan, who reminds us that ”the world needs togetherness, not separation. Love, not suspicion. A common future, not isolation.”
Participating artists include: David Adjaye, Etel Adnan, Ai Weiwei, John Akomfrah, Sophia Al Maria, Maxwell Alexandre, Mathis Altmann, Francis Alÿs, Chino Amobi, Anohni, Meriem Bennani, Kasper Bosmans, Mohamed Bourouissa, Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Tania Bruguera, Sophie Calle, Cao Fei, Antonio Caro, Ian Cheng, Judy Chicago, Mel Chin, Clément Cogitore, Tony Cokes, Maryse Condé & Françoise Sémiramoth, Douglas Coupland, Julien Creuzet, Patrisse Cullors, Aria Dean, Eugenio Dittborn, Jimmie Durham, Latifa Echakhch, Olafur Eliasson, Brian Eno, Simone Fattal, Peter Fischli, Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi & Simone Farresin), Norman Foster, Gérard Fromanger, Fernando García-Dory, Theaster Gates, Anna Bella Geiger, Avital Geva, Liam Gillick, Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, Beatriz González, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Nicole Gravier, Renée Green, Joseph Grigely, Hans Haacke, Lauren Halsey, Newton Harrison, Camille Henrot, Thomas Hirschhorn, Huang Yong Ping, Ho Tzu Nyen, Carsten Höller, Jenny Holzer, Sky Hopinka, Luchita Hurtado, Pierre Huyghe, Arthur Jafa, Andrés Jaque, Liz Johnson Artur, Kahlil Joseph, Amar Kanwar, Bouchra Khalili, Josh Kline, Alexander Kluge, Koo Jeong A, Suzanne Lacy, Maya Lin, Liu Chuang, David Lynch, Catherine Malabou, Friederike Mayröcker, Annette Messager, Sarah Morris, Zanele Muholi, Oscar Murillo, Eileen Myles, Lorraine O’Grady, Precious Okoyomon, Yoko Ono, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Philippe Parreno, Thao Nguyen Phan, Raymond Pettibon, Vaclav Pozarek, Paul B. Preciado, Raqs Media Collective, Pedro Reyes, Tabita Rezaire, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist, Rachel Rose, Sara Sadik, Anri Sala, Tomás Saraceno, Peter Saville, Bruno Serralongue, Stephen Shore, Marianna Simnett, Cauleen Smith, Patrick Staff, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Swoon, Martine Syms, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Barthélémy Toguo, Nora Turato, Günther Uecker, Jacques Villeglé, Jan Vorisek, Madelon Vriesendorp, John Waters, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, Stanley Whitney, Kandis Williams, James Wines, and Samson Young.
