info.

Limestone Books is an art space co-founded in Maastricht by the curatorial collective Jhen Chen, Yu Liang-Kai, Emily Shin-Jie Lee, HSIEH I Hsuan, and Chang Yu-Hsin. The platform is situated in a historic building in the city centre, approximately 60 square meters.

Limestone Books is dedicated to art publishing and contemporary art, with a focus on non-Western perspectives, marginalised voices, and diasporic communities. It is a fluid yet grounded and interconnected artistic network, bringing together local and international communities. We maintain close ties with local feminist, diasporic, anti-racist, multicultural, and refugee groups. Through these connections, we enable non-institutional, non-mainstream, non-Western, or outsider artistic practices to take place.

Limestone Books is committed to serving as a cultural foundation in Maastricht. We continually explore and reflect on methods of working with artists and audiences. We maintain exchange programs with organisations in Finland, Kosovo, Serbia, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, and Hong Kong. These exchanges strengthen our artistic network, making it both flexible and resilient, and they play an important role in sustaining artistic practice in a southern city where diversity is relatively limited.

ART BOOKSHOP

We offer a selection of art books, as well as some fiction and political literature. We collaborate with Jan van Eyck Academie, managing and selling their publications.

FIREBRAT LIBRARY

We invited more than ten local groups and art collectives to each contribute 20 books. These were integrated with our existing archives to form a collective library, which offers membership to nearby residents so they can borrow books for free. The collection evolves over time, shaped and influenced by the local community and responsive to current sociopolitical realities.

PROGRAMME

Limestone Books collaborates with international artists, designers, cultural workers, and local communities. Our programming ranges from weekly reading groups and artist talks to longer-term projects, such as Artist Takeover and the Melon-Picnic project. We see space as an experimental platform where anything can unfold.

RISO WORKSHOP

Our RISO workshop is open to the public, supporting artists/makers in developing their projects. We offer workshops and training. We approach printing as a practice of activism. Following the principle of Print Local, Sell Local, we not only print our own publications but also collaborate with RISO workshops in Asia, printing non-Western-centred publications for dissemination in the Netherlands.

PUBLISHING

We strive to harness publishing as an active force, a strategy for decolonising the global capitalist model of knowledge production, and a way to learn from diverse cultures.

collaborate.

If you’d like to present a book, sell your publications, or propose another collaboration, please get in touch. For book launches, we ask for 3–5 copies of your publication but do not charge for space or time. To sell books, email us images and a description; we accept only self-published works and will contact you if interested. For other ideas, such as talks, screenings or workshops, please send your proposal to event@limestonebooks.org, and we’ll respond as soon as possible.

about.

BOARD

Liang-Kai Yu
Chang YuHsin
Emily Shin-Jie Lee
HSIEH I Hsuan

DIRECTOR

Jhen Chen

EVENT COORDINATOR

Stefana Mitrut

SPACE DESIGN

Chang YuHsin

WEB DESIGN

K.Chen

PUBLISHING & RISO WORKSHOP

Jhen Chen
Max Yust

FIREBRAT LIBRARY

Stefana Mitrut

COMMUNICATION

Stefana Mitrut
Paula Chang

INTERN

Tess Ardjosentono

VOLUTEERS

Max Yust
Ali Sardari Shahbolaghi

FORMER COLLABORATORS *Alphabetical order by last name.

Elinice Adeyemi
Jody Aikman
Anas Chao
Tzi Ling Chew
Milena Dahl
Victoria Lin
Orizsadiva Nauli
Luisa Owens
Davina Poot
Halar Soomro
Ezanneo Tsani
Pitou Vermaas
Ryan White

Reading Group – The Video Closet: Nollywood’s gay-themed movies