Iraq
By: Ingrid Sanchez
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
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; Culture in art; Storytelling in art; History in art; Liberty; 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.

"History is something I believe in and preserve within my work, in order to create something new everyday. And if we take at least the concept and spirit of Al-Mutanabbi into the works we are changing, [we can] build a new al-Mutanabbi Street out of books. The bricks in this piece symbolize a new foundation. Here, we give the viewer of these books the opportunity and chance to dream; to be liberated from the pressures of daily life. For it is a fundamental human right to dream, and to have freedom of choice, in terms of to how to live one's life. Over the years, my work has taken many shapes and forms"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Ingrid de Aguiar Sanchez creates prints, drawings and installations that examine cultural and linguistic hybridism as a method of adaption and survival. In her ongoing project Fragmentos, she intervenes walls with graphic and organic imagery arranged in mosaic-like collages. Reminiscent of a building façade in her native Brazil, the work references different forms of visual expression that transpire in public space such as contemporary graffiti and colonial-era baroque design. Born in 1984 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ingrid de Aguiar Sanchez received her BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006, and her MFA from Tufts University in 2011. Recent group exhibitions include Vestments (2013), 17Cox Gallery, Beverly, MA, Snip Emerging Artist Exhibition, Kingston Gallery (2012), Everyday Angles at David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University (2012) Woman History Month/Works by Emerging American and Cuban Artists, US Interests Section (USINT), Havana, Cuba, (2012) Here We Are Who Cares? Traveling MFA Group Show, NK Gallery, South Boston (2011); and Boston Young Contemporaries, Boston, MA (2010). Sanchez received The Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Grant to pursue a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate at the Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy and more recently, the Montague International Travel Grant to attend a printmaking residency at the Frans Masereel Centre in Kasterlee, Belgium"--The artist's website (viewed July 16, 2015).

"As an artist and immigrant, my cultural baggage is maintained and recycled, through the assimilation of information in order to create distinct forms that can easily adapt to many environments and surfaces. The chaos of accumulation provides a sense of freedom that is grounded in the diversity of contemporary culture. My interpretation of diversity surpasses appearance; it has its roots on Baroque ideology, which was an attempt to reflect natural ways to institutionalize linguistic behavior. Within the Latin American context, the Baroque methodology was unable to reproduce the reality of daily life with precision, resulting in a depletion of images that seem fragmented and twisted. It is through fragments and the translation of reality into imagery is where I currently situate my concept. We live in a world of chaos and order surrounded by an atmosphere of tension and anxiety. My work exists within this struggle. The images of made up organisms conflicting against themselves strive towards a fragmented beauty and order, and between dimensions, that goes beyond comprehension. History is organic, where the rational and abstract, are brought together in a vigorous state of play"--Statement from the artist's website (viewed July 16, 2015).
Notes: 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.