Common Things presents an exhibition of artist books that reclaim the physical object as an instrument of memory.

Across the display, material and narrative collapse into one: concrete that bears the weight of lived experience, typography that becomes testimony, and pages that hold time. Books as Objects, Books as Memory positions the artist book not as a passive vessel for text, but as an active site where form itself speaks, where touch and memory are woven together.

The exhibition is organized around two artist books by Rhea Karam, published by Small Editions, which emerged from the experience of her family’s wartime displacement from Lebanon in 1982. In this work, material and meaning are not merely connected—they are fused. In 1982, a book with a concrete slipcase, the physical density mirrors the weight of history in this context; its form becomes an archive of upheaval and resilience.

Surrounding Karam’s work is a curated selection of books united by recurring themes: home and longing, loss and retrieval, belonging and exile. The exhibition moves beyond these thematic threads—what emerges is a larger declaration: design as witness to rupture. Through craft, typography, binding, and structure, the book functions as an act of care.

Housed within Common Things’ intimate storefront in Manhattan’s East Village, Books as Objects, Books as Memory unfolds in a space itself shaped by narrative intention. Founded by architect and designer Komal Kehar of Mira Projects, Common Things has long positioned retail as a curatorial practice—a space where every object carries a unique history.

This exhibition takes place within NYCxDesign, a broader moment of design discourse across the city. It is an intentionally quiet intervention in an age of digital reproduction—Books as Objects, Books as Memory insists on the irreplaceable power of the printed page, the hand-bound object, the weight of paper as a refusal to let memory fade.

A panel discussion with Rhea Karam, Hannah Yukiko Pierce of Small Editions, and Komal Kehar of Common Things will take place at the end of design week, centered on the role of design in capturing memory.