Who counts
Subtitle: neo-Babylonian word problem
By: Anna Wexler
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library); Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Publisher: [Anna Wexler]
Published: 2011
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; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Numbers in art; Old Persian inscriptions; Cuneiform inscriptions; Memory in art; 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.
Notes: "Thanks to Margaret Bellafiore for inspiration with the visual conception, and to Joe Wexler for help with writing large cuneiform numbers."

Medium: Japanese (Yuzen) paper, twine, thread, gold pen, Iraq map, cuneiform numbers, adhesive letters, portfolio holder and pages.

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.

"Anna Wexler is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who works with text, installation and ritually configured performance to distill specific legacies of structural violence and visionary resistance. Her works have been commissioned for exhibits and events exploring the influence of culturally diverse ritual practices, especially those of the Afro-Caribbean, on contemporary art"--The University of Southern Maine's website (viewed July 31, 2015).