A friend
By: Merike van Zanten
Contributors: Euripides; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library); Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge 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; Intellectual freedom; Pain in art; Loss (Psychology) in art; Grief in art; Artists' books
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.

"The quote by Euripides, one of the great tragedians of classical Athens, expresses my feelings about why I joined the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. Too often we turn away from atrocities like this. Either because we don't know how to react to carnage, pain, loss, and sorrow, or because a constant barrage of violence portrayed in the news has dulled our feelings"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.
Notes: Medium/Materials: Book, bandages, text on transparency, quote by Euripides; memory box.

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.

Holland-born, Massachusetts-based mixed media artist Merike Van Zanten makes sculptural paper forms and artists books using found materials. Merike van Zanten got her BA (Honors) in Ceramics from the University of the Creative Arts, Rochester, UK. During this period, she had artist residencies in the USA and Italy. At the London New Designers Exhibition in 2002, she was one of the top ten designers. In 2003, Van Zanten moved to the USA, and began working in letterpress design, printing, and the book arts. She has made commissioned work in the USA and The Netherlands, has work in private collections in The Netherlands, England, and the USA, and has exhibited in England, and currently, in the USA.