Shroud
Subtitle: a piece of fabric sewn to a piece of paper by way of a map
Contributors: Magi, Jill, author; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [California Institute of the Arts, School of Critical Studies]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Valencia, Calif.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 34
Subjects: Artists' books; Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Terrorism in art; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, urban cyclist, and co-founder of the language justice and literary activism collaborative Antena. Her latest translations include the homemade chapbook En las maravillas/In Wonder (Libros Antena/Antena Books, 2012) and Ivory Black, a translation of Negro marfil by Myriam Moscona (Les Figues Press 2011). Her recent and forthcoming books are available from a range of small presses, including Action Books, Atelos, Dusie Books, Insert Press, Kenning Editions, Litmus Press, Palm Press, and Subpress. She teaches poetics, translation and bookmaking at CalArts and Otis College.

Jill Magi works in text, textile, and image. She is the author of Threads, Torchwood, Cadastral Map, and SLOT, as well as numerous handmade books. Visual work has been exhibited at Columbia College, The Textile Arts Center, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and apexart. Her essays on art, writing, and culture have been published in The Brooklyn Rail, The Eco-Language Reader, and Letters to Poets. An extended essay on a text-image theory/curriculum is forthcoming from Furniture in Motion/Rattapallax in 2013. She teaches at Goddard College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College.
Notes: Cover title.

Medium: Unbleached muslin, standard-issue office supply paper and envelopes, Neenah Paper cover stock (color: “Desert Storm”), adhesive, embroidery thread.

"Shroud: A Piece of Fabric Sewn To A Piece of Paper By Way of A Map by Jen Hofer and Jill Magi responds to al-Mutanabbi Street's history by attempting to map violence and resiliency in our own context: capitalism versus gift economies, surveillance and standardization versus art, censorship versus conversation. The hand-stitched muslin squares reproduced in the book were passed across the kitchen table and then through the mail between Los Angeles and Chicago. The essay-poem was written collaboratively via email"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Shroud was made collaboratively by Jen Hofer and Jill Magi ... it is part of An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street, co-covened by Beau Beausoleil in San Francisco, CA and Sarah Bodman in Bristol, UK, a collection of artists' books made in response to the 2007 bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling"--Colophon

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.