Shrezade entre el Eufrates y el Tigris
By: Luz Darriba
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965; University of the West of England, Bristol. Centre for Fine Print Research; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Brussels, Belgium?]
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; 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.

Luz Darriba is a multidisciplinary artist born in 1954 in Montevideo, Uruguay. In 1969, Darriba moved to Buenos Aires, where she studied Fine Arts, obtaining a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. Luz Darriba currently lives and works between Brussels and Spain, where she's involved in creating urban interventions.
Notes: Medium consists of paper and mixed techniques.

"The book tells a little personal history, which begins in the Rio de la Plata and ends between the Euphrates and Tigris, on a trip that changed my worldview. Speaking of books is to speak of my life. I use a phrase from the Memoirs of Hadrian: 'The first birth of place is one in we look for the first time with a look intelligent; my first homelands were the books.' The idea of the book is to travel a little time in which the books have also suffered repression of dictatorships or totalitarian regimes, [as they're] being burned or destroyed"--The Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website (viewed May 7, 2015).

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.