This world of ours
By: Éilis Kirby
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; University of the West of England, Bristol. Centre for Fine Print Research; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [EAK Press]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: [Bristol, England]
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; English Collage; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: EAK Press was founded, and is run, by Éilis Kirby. She was born in the U.S.A., moved to the UK from Ireland in 1988, completed a BA in Fine Art and an MA in Arts and Ecology, and now lives and works in Bristol. Much of her work consists of the manipulation of found images and texts, examples of which can be found in several collections including Tate Modern, The National Irish Visual Arts Library and University College London. She has also participated in several international collaborative exhibitions and in artists' book fairs in the UK and abroad.
Notes: Medium: Photocopied collages on a variety of papers and acetate.

"There is nothing to be said, but much to figure out. We observe, we experience, we reflect. We struggle to understand, to order, to place, to position, to orientate ourselves in a world of complexity and contradiction. We look for certainties; we try to pin down, to define. We seek stabilisation. We seek meaning, and to transcend the vulnerability of our fleshly bodies. What are we? What is our place on this earth? We make, we destroy, we attack, and we mend. We are tender, and cruel. We fly, and fall. We are static, and in flux. We continue ..."--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

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.

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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.