This is a book to commemorate the victims of the bomb on the book market of Baghdad 2007
By: Wilma Vissers
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library); Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Publisher: [Wilma Vissers]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Heerlen, Netherlands]
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; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Dreams in art; Drawing; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: 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.

"The title of my books is in the Arabic language. A friend of mine translated this text: 'This is a book to commemorate the victims of the bomb on the book market of Baghdad 2007.' I made the books with fibre paper that was made from old clothes and paper. It has several foldout pages. I did this because I like it when a book has several different sizes of pages. It will give the viewer a surprise, as they don't know what will come next. I used a variety of drawing techniques. One of them is the old carbon copy technique. For the words of the title on the cover, I wrote with a very sharp pencil over the letters of the title text on top of a paper with red paste on it. In this way, I copied the letters without printing them. The result suited me and it reminded me of the old carbon sheet copy used before there were any photocopy machines. The drawings in the book are inspired by a dream I had of the bomb exploding, but by a miracle the letters from the pages of the books escaped and flew off their books over hills and seas to find a new home. If I see a language that I cannot read, for example Arabic, the letters seem like loose signs to me, almost like drawings. So the letters in my book that escaped out of the books appear to be drawings in the sky. I am always curious about what is the point where language becomes form. The books where made when I stayed for four weeks at Ceardlann na gNoc, an artist-in-residence centre in Donegal, Ireland: It is in a very rugged landscaped dominated by the Errigal. Of course, that is an influence too. One of the foldout pages is directly inspired by the Errigal"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 4.

Medium: Drawing on fiber paper.

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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.

"I am inspired by emptiness and space. Spatiality and infinite space must be present even in the smallest work. That is why I go to Ireland for several weeks every year. Space plays an important role: not only the space between my artworks, but also how a space is used when I present them as a large installation on the wall. I want to pay attention to the detail of each individual work of art that was made separately, without losing sight of the larger whole formed by all of them together"--Artist's statement from the Painter's Progress blogsite (viewed July 30, 2015).

Title translated from Arabic.