Studio: esther@estherchoi.net
Editorial photography: Visual Culture
Academic profile: The Cooper Union
Esther Choi is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist and scholar based in New York City, whose work moves in the space between art and architecture. In her artistic projects and writing, she explores the politics of worldmaking: the interpretive frames, symbols, and practices through which we create our worlds. She is particularly interested in how political technologies of modernity such as architecture, biotechnology, and design have abstracted concepts and representations of nature, human nature, and identity.
In addition to time-based media, photography, and installation, Choi works in participatory forms created with their means of circulation in mind, reframing contemporary photographic culture, ubiquitous information technologies, and distribution networks to speculate on alternative realities. Choi is the creator of Office Hours (2020–), a knowledge sharing project for cultural practitioners who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, and Public Service (2023–), a forthcoming spin-off web zine inspired by the writings of Stuart Hall that places BIPOC cultural producers in moderated conversations about creating cultural change. In 2019 she published Le Corbuffet (Prestel, 2019), an artist’s book that appropriates the format and circulation systems of cookbook publishing to pose questions about history, cultural privilege and cultural value, which was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award in Photography.
Choi’s writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Art Papers, and e-flux, in addition to edited volumes and exhibition catalogues. She is the co-editor of two books, Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (MIT Press, 2010) and Architecture Is All Over (Columbia U, 2017).
Currently a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art, Choi’s scholarship often seeks to understand the histories of the conditions to which her artwork responds. Choi is working on a book entitled The Organization of Life, based on her Ph.D. dissertation completed at Princeton University. The manuscript considers how biological discourses positioned modern architecture and design as “civilizing” and evolutionary tools to invent an ideal human and worldview that replicated the biocentric orders, racial logics, and coloniality of Western thought.
Her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, PIN-UP, Dwell, Vogue, The Architect’s Newspaper, 032, and more. Her photographs have been commissioned by publications such as T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Le Monde, Dazed and Confused, The New York Times Magazine, and AnOther Man. Choi's work has been supported by awards, fellowships, and grants from The Ford Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada, Richard Rogers Fellowship, Princeton University, The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Society of Architectural Historians, and Canadian Centre for Architecture, among others.
Choi is an Adjunct Associate Professor at The Cooper Union. She has taught courses in photography, criticism and curatorial practice, socially engaged practice, and architectural history and theory at OCAD University, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, and The New School.
- Education
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2019
Ph.D., History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton University
• Recipient of the 2020 David B. Brownlee Dissertation Award, Society of Architectural Historians -
2008
MDes (AP), History and Theory of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design
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2007
MFA, Photography/ Studio Arts, Concordia University
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2001
BFA, Photography, Toronto Metropolitan University
- Recent & Forthcoming Exhibitions
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2021
Modern Societies I, Texas State Galleries, TX (Solo) Jan. 19–April 11, 2021
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2020
Prints from Der Mensch, University of Tennessee, TN (Solo) Jan. 27-Feb. 21, 2020.
- Recent Writing
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2023
“A World At One With Itself,” Harvard Design Magazine, Issue 51: The Multihyphenate. Guest edited by Sean Canty, Zeina Koreitem, John May. Forthcoming
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2022
"Keywords," PIN-UP Magazine (Summer 2022). Print.
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2022
"Life, In Theory: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies," in Radical Pedagogies, eds. Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister (Cambridge: MIT Press).
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2021
“New Forms of Articulation: Sumayya Vally in conversation with Esther Choi,” Deem Journal. (2021).
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2021
"The Interpretation", Solicited: proposals, E-flux Architecture and ArkDes, Print and Web.
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2019
“Sustainability’s Image Problem.” Library Stack for the Oslo Architecture Triennale.
- Publications
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2019
Le Corbuffet: Art and Design Classics (Prestel 2019). Nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award for Photography (2020).
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2017
Architecture Is All Over, coeditor (Columbia U; with Marrikka Trotter)
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2010
Architecture At the Edge of Everything Else, co-editor (MIT Press; with Marrikka Trotter,)
- Selected Bibliography
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2022
Gabrielle Chua, "Five Artists Who Are Also Masters in the Kitchen," Tatler Asia. (June 2022). Web.
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2021
Jess Myers, "Esther Choi Is Building a Global Community to Nurture the Next Generation of Designers," Dwell Magazine (Sept./ Oct. 2021): 44–45. Print and web.
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2021
Leilah Stone, "Low Ego, High Impact," Metropolis Magazine (July/ August 2021). Print and web.
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2021
Wanda Lau, "Esther Choi: Courage Is a Muscle," Architect Magazine, June 21, 2021.
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2021
Jack Balderamma Morley, "The second season of Office Hours promises more opportunities for young BIPOC designers." The Architect's Newspaper. (March 4, 2021). Print and web.
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2020
“Office Hours is shifting the landscape for BIPOC creatives,” Architizer.
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2020
"Still Life With Fly Swatter, or Hourglass, or Lemons," T: The New York Times Style Magazine
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2020
"All you can read," Art Review
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2020
"Meet Esther Choi, Artist and Author of Subversive Cookbook 'Le Corbuffet'," PIN-UP
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2020
"Punishable: Esther Choi Eats Our Idols,"032c, Issue 37 (Winter 2019/20): 292–93. Print and web.