Fantasy America

Book excerpt: Contemporary artists revisit Warhol's 1985 love letter to America Originally published in 1985, Warhol's Americafeatures photographs both taken and collected by the artist during his cross-country travels and in-person encounters over the previous decade. The book, an idiosyncratic love letter to America, finds Warhol reflecting on everything from travel, beauty and fame to politics, technology and the American Dream. Three decades later, Fantasy Americainvites artists Nona Faustine, Kambui Olujimi, Pacifico Silano, Naama Tsabar and Chloe Wise to revisit this seminal publication and contribute their own art. All New York-based, they, like Warhol, are cross-disciplinary artists drawn to repetition, seriality and image appropriation in their work. Against the backdrop of nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the Black Lives Matter movement, the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election, these essays and artworks probe and challenge our perceptions of what America is and what it can become.