And then it happened on Mutanabbi Street
Subtitle: Bagdad, March 5, 2007
By: [Karen Esteves]
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Karen Esteves]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [Miami Shores, Fla.]
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.

Karen Esteves has a BFA in printmaking, and an MFA in graphic arts from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Fla. She has taught graphic design classes at Barry University, Florida Atlantic University, and Lynn University.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 5.

Materials & technique: This book contains (2) solar plate designs based on illustrations of favorite Persian stories, modified in Photoshop and Illustrator. Then these prints were hand colored, using water colors and gold leaf. InDesign 5.5 was used for the book layout.

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.

"Why do we discuss Al-Mutanabbi Street? Because this was the place where ideas brewed in Baghdad. It was an attempt to obliterate history - the life-blood of society - the thread that holds culture togther. Destroy Al-Mutanabbi Street and resistance is silenced. Think of the Library of Alexandria, the book burnings during the Spanish Inquisition; the Nazi's in Opernplatz; and shamefully, most recently, the burning of the sacred Quran by Pastor Terry Jones, Gainesville, FL ... Books may burn but so does the endless imagination and ideas of humankind, and we will never stop."

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.