Nadine has edited over fifty books on art, culture and theory, and collaborated with a long list of artists that includes Jeremy Deller, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Sonia Boyce, Gary Hume, Bob and Roberta Smith, Pipilotti Rist, Mark Leckey, David Noonan, David Shrigley, and William Kentridge. She has commissioned writing from an equally inspiring group of writers, including Stuart Hall, Marina Warner, Brian Dillon, Dave Eggers, Rick Moody and Rachel Cusk. Nadine also occasionally commissions and produces films, and is currently developing a podcast series on writing with and for each other.
Some Editorial Projects
Ana Mendieta: Traces
Traces is the first monograph on the artist Ana Mendieta, commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem for Hayward Gallery. Using her own body and elemental materials such as blood, fire, earth, or water, Ana Mendieta created visceral performances and ephemeral
"earth-body works" exploring life, death, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. Born in Cuba but sent to America as a child, much of her art expresses the pain and rupture of cultural displacement and exile.
Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage
Commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem with Stephanie Rosenthal for Hayward Gallery. Pipilotti Rist first made her mark on the international art scene in the 1990s, with experimental single-channel video works. Working with immersive aural effects and intimate, exploratory cinematography. Her work explores themes of female sexuality, mass media culture and the essential beauty of the human body in nature through vibrant large-scale multimedia installations. Featuring a visual essay by the artist and with texts by Chrissie Iles, Elisabeth Bronfen, Konrad Bitterli, Stefanie Müller and Stephanie Rosenthal.
Three Bodies
Three Bodies is a short film directed by Dorothy Allen-Pickard, produced by Nadine Monem and commissioned by Molonglo. It follows the journey of three people - Joy Addo, Sonia Boué and Kat Hawkins — as they make a journey from public to private space, from outside to in. The footage, shot by the film's contributors, is accompanied by their own narration as they reflect on their experience and impressions of navigating the world through and in non-normative bodyminds—experiences of fitting and misfitting, of anxiety and pleasure.
Grayson Perry:
The Vanity of Small Differences
Commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem for the Arts Council Collection. The Vanity of Small Differences features
Perry's six vibrant and highly detailed tapestries bearing the influence both of early Renaissance painting and of William Hogarth's moralising series, literally weaving characters, incidents and objects drawn from the artist's cultural criticism into a contemporary reimagining of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1733).
Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing
Commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem with Brian Dillon for Hayward Touring. Curiosity explores the notion of intellectual and creative curiosity. With commissioned texts by Brian Dillon and Marina Warner, this book explores objects, artworks and narratives drawn from a variety of disciplines –scientific, occult, anthropological and aesthetic – taking as its guide a sensibility that developed in Europe in the early modern period and tracing it at work in disparate historical and contemporary contexts.
Candida Powell-Williams: Unreasonable Silences
Commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem for common-editions. Powell-Williams longstanding interest in the absurd led her to consider mysticism within storytelling and its meeting point with the mundane materiality of objects. This research informed the creation of an hour-long performance at the Serpentine Gallery, London in September 2018, where she re-animated the tarot as a three-dimensional space, exploring the encounter between action, storytelling, symbolism and magical thinking. Candida has created her own 78-card tarot deck, Unreasonable Silence, which maps the depiction of archetypes and symbols from classical antiquity to present day whilst drawing influence from the geometric, biomorphic and symbolic language of occult practices.
Jeremy Deller:
Joy in People
Commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem with Jeremy Deller for Hayward Gallery. This monograph of the artist, filmmaker, curator and cultural archivist Jeremy Deller presents compelling, subversive works from his entire career. Includes essays by the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall, music historian Rob Young and Hayward Gallery's Ralph Rugoff, there is also a conversation between Deller and curator Matthew Higgs and a focus piece by the artist's mother.
Marie Jacotey: Dear Love…
Commissioned and edited by Nadine Monem for common-editions. Dear Love Who Should Have Been Forever Mine is the first artist’s book by French artist Marie Jacotey. The book presents a collection of unique drawings and texts, slowly revealing the correspondence between two former lovers trying to piece together their story. The book is made up of 30 individual artworks, loosely folded and gathered into two sections, each corresponding to the perspective of one of the protagonists. Part introspection, part emotional exchange, the visual correspondence can be read in multiple ways: in a series as part of a continuous narrative, individually as unique artworks, or even placed as a large-scale installation.