Lost words
By: Laura Davidson
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Laura Davidson]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: [Boston, MA]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Words in art; Books in art; Miniature books; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: "Laura Davidson is an artist who makes books, drawings, mosaics and boxes. She incorporates many types of materials in her work, including wood, paper, wax, metals, and objects found in her eclectic collections. Her interest in mosaic and other classical methods frequently show up in her work. Maps, art history, travel, architecture and her love of birds are recurring elements in her visual vocabulary. Laura Davidson grew up in Michigan, attended Michigan State University, and received a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute. Since that time she has been living and working in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood, a downtown warehouse district that is home to a vibrant arts community, with her partner and daughter. She has received several grants for her work, and her books can be found in private collections and libraries throughout the United States and around the world"--The artist's website (viewed June 23, 2015).
Notes: Printed in an edition of 4.

Medium: Drypoint prints, with ink drawings and gold leaf.

"For those who lost all on Al-Mutanabbi Street, and for those who continue to be lost to violence."

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.