Ulises Carrión: Sonnet(s)

Ulises Carrión left Mexico City for Europe in 1970 and eventually settled in Amsterdam, where, in 1975, he wrote his manifesto, “The New Art of Making Books” and founded the legendary bookshop-gallery, Other Books and So, a hub for mail art activity and one of the first venues dedicated to artists’ publications.

In 1972, Carrión took a single poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and churned it through 44 typographic and procedural permutations. The publication of ‘Sonnet(s)’, one of the first of his influential “bookworks,” signaled a departure from Carrión’s earlier writing practice.

A pioneer in conceptualizing the artists book, mail art, and what today might be called social practice, Carrión, who died in 1989, has only recently been recognized with a retrospective exhibit at Reina Sofia (Madrid) and Museo Jumex (Mexico City).