Still alive
By: Pieretta Sakellariou
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [Athens, Greece]
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; Conceptual art; Miniature books; 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.

"Colours, materials and poetic texts that carry marks and fragments between transparency and opacity, and are at the same time evoking and healing the reality of a wound that can't sink into oblivion"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Pieretta Sakellariou was born in Athens in 1957, and has lived in France since 1975, where she studied Fine Arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the distinguished National School of Fine Arts and Human Sciences, in Paris. Besides her work as a clinical psychologist, she has had an active career in the so-called "plastic arts," with several exhibitions. She has also written both published and unpublished works of poetry. Sakellariou currently works at a counseling center for children and teenagers, where her psychotherapeutic workshops focus on art and the creative process.
Notes: Consists of mini-artists' books in a cardboard box.

Medium: Pigments, acrylic binder, ink, fixative on tissue and paper. Also: Japanese paper, tracing paper, printing paper, veil, transparency, waxed flax material and strings.

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.