About 👀

Sming Sming Books is the publishing studio of artist Vivian Sming, experimenting with books as art, discourse, exhibition, and archive. Formed in 2017, the studio designs and publishes a wide range of artists’ books, zines, and editions in close collaboration with artists whose works and ideas inform design, material, and printing choices. Sming Sming Books is invested in creating books from practices that are challenging to represent on paper. The studio is committed to promoting critical discourse and advancing cultural equity through the format of publishing.

A selection of titles are publicly accessible in over 150 libraries, museums, and universities, nation- and worldwide, and have been featured in aperture, Art in America, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and the New York Times. Sming Sming Books received the Shannon Michael Cane Memorial Award from Printed Matter, Inc. in 2018, a San Francisco Art Book Fair Publishing Grant in 2020, and an Alternative Exposure Grant from Southern Exposure in 2023. Past workshops and lectures have been held at ArtCenter, Asia Art Archive in America, California College of the Arts, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and SFAI. 

Sming Sming Book’s logo artwork is by Joseph Lee. 🐯

Learn about how we work with artists.

Printers We ❤️

Bookmobile (Minneapolis)
Colpa Press
(San Francisco)
Lightning Press (Santa Clara)

Partners
For the Birds Trapped in Airports
Memory and Resistance Laboratory
Communities of Memory
crystalline morphologies

Past Partners & Clients
Art + Practice
Art Practical
at land's edge
Candor Arts
Drawing Room Records
The Getty Research Institute
Hunter College Art Galleries
ICA San José
INCITE Journal of Experimental Media
KADIST
Living Room Light Exchange
NIAD Art Center
Occidental College
San Francisco Cinematheque
Southern Exposure
Wolfman Books
X Artists’ Books