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Subtitle: a book for Al-Mutanabbi Street Project
By: by Lahib Jaddo
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Lahib Jaddo]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [Lubbock, Texas]
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; Words in art; Books in art; Identity (Philosophical concept); Social isolation in art; Women in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: "I am an Iraqi-born visual artist based in the southwestern United States. My paintings and mixed-media works span nearly three decades and explore the condition of identity, loss/belonging, and the cultural imaginary of the 'homeland' through the specific lens of the Middle Eastern Diaspora artist. In my view, the notion of homeland is not fixed or static, but rather a shifting and organic idea that changes according to my own emotional states and inner worlds. Whether placed in landscapes of belonging, or negative abstract spaces of isolation, the female figures in my work explore the circumstances of planting roots in a new world, while remaining inextricably connected to another"--Artist's personal website.
Notes: Machine and hand-stitched cloth in 6 layers, with borders and buttons sewn on; image of a veiled woman and leaves on 1st layer.

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.

Rare Book (Al-Mutanabbi copy): With a facsimile, printed in color on opaque white fabric (6 unnumbered sheets ; 41 x 34 cm).

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.

English and Arabic.