Ex-votos
Subtitle: altered books
By: Linda Toigo
Contributors: Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Linda Toigo]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London, England]
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; Votive offerings in art; Heart in art; Altered books; 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.

"I was born in Trieste, a beautiful seaside city in the North East of Italy; then I moved to Milan, where, after graduating in Architecture, I spent three years working as an urban planner. In 2009, I decided to change my scale of intervention and moved to London to study Graphic Design at LCC: there, I fed my curiosity for book design and book structures, a leitmotif that I kept developing throughout the years. Soon after, I discovered the controversial practice of creation through book destruction. Ever since then, I have approached alteration as a celebration of books, paying homage to their volumetric qualities and the cultural value inscribed within their pages"--The artist's website (viewed July 27, 2015).
Notes: A series of three altered copies of The outline of history by H.G. Wells.

Medium: Altered book.

"The English science fiction writer, not satisfied by the quality of educational history books of his time, wrote his personal contribution to the History of the world. While I was wandering around second-hand book shops, I found three different American editions of his texts, and I decided to transform them into objects that would carry a sacred symbolic value. I titled my three books after the ex-votos, votive offerings that cover the walls of certain little churches in devoted communities, mostly in Southern Europe and South America. It is a very intimate and traditional way to communicate with the supernatural that has always impressed me. My intervention consisted in printing old medical images of hearts directly on the pages, and in carving the books with surgical cuts, that would reveal the volumetric and material quality of the objects. This treatment, of course, doesn't allow the text to be completely read. The words and images are still there though: they interact with the added images, creating new patterns on the altered paper. Milestone events in Wells' History are evoked by the names, the fragments of maps, and the portraits that survived the cuts, and that can be found when flipping through the scattered wounded pages. In the three books, History doesn't follow a chronological order: the eye is drawn through the holes and deep into the space, carved away by the scalpel, to create connections between events otherwise distant, allowing the reader to experience a dynamic and organic way of conceiving the evolution of the World"--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.