A lullaby of lost love
By: Joshua Goode
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: [Joshua Goode]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Fort Worth, TX]
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.

Joshua received his BFA from SMU and his MFA from Boston University, and has exhibited his work internationally in solo shows in venues such as the Zendai Museum of Modern Art and Shanghai University in Shanghai, China, in addition to group shows at the Museum of the National Library in Madrid. Spain, National Library of Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina and at Loyola University, Rome, Italy. Joshua has also exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at the Boston Center for the Arts, Janet Turner Print Museum in California, in addition to venues in New York, Seattle, Chicago, Washington D.C., Austin, Houston and Dallas, and is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, Penang State Museum in Malaysia, Cabildo de La Palma in Spain, and the Naval Academy Museum in Maryland. Joshua has been a Visiting Artist or Guest Critic at Shanghai University, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Dartmouth College, Marist College and Savannah College of Art and Design. He was recently awarded the Dozier Travel Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art and is currently the Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas.
Notes: "As a Texan, it is difficult for me to understand an event of this magnitude and the rippling after-effects. To better understand and access this tragedy, I used familiar imagery to make this literally 'hit home;' envisioning its destruction and grasping desperately at the remains. A lullaby of lost love. Yet, no matter how engrossed in the book I became, at the end it is still an illusion and all I cherish are still a reality"--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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.