Palimpsest
By: Sara Bowen
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Sara Bowen]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [New South Wales, Australia]
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; Embossing (Printing); Paper work; Printing; Memory in art; Meaning (Philosophy); Palimpsests; 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.

"The word palimpsest comes from the Greek word palimpsestos, meaning 'rubbed again' and refers to the re-use of expensive parchment by scraping off the original text or drawings and writing over them again. This book examines the notion of the pavement as a palimpsest, written and re-written with the lives of those walking over it. I've looked at many ideas and images in the making of this book; I've started and stopped many journeys, abandoning half-made books as I go because I ran into a technical or conceptual problem. It has been hard to narrow down the making to one particular book, but I realised that I am always drawn to surface, and that I have looked repeatedly at one photograph of a Baghdad pavement strewn with fragments of paper after a bomb detonated. The photograph at once described the destruction and failed to tell the whole story: where did the fragmented pages come from? Who had owned them, and what happened to them? Palimpsest is a concertina book that marries a long-standing use of hand paper cutting and blind embossing with printmaking techniques. A scuffed stretch of cobble stone pavement carries marks of daily life: foot prints, grime and cigarette butts. Indeterminate stains could be blood or paint. Caught in the cracks between the cobbles dirt collects: enough, eventually, to sustain life. The plants that grow in the cracks in a pavement are weeds: hardy, displaced, opportunistic. Tenaciously they sprout in barren places, even places where atrocities have happened. In Palimpsest the small sprouts are of pomegranate trees, symbols of fertility and new life. The Persian hero Isfandiyar ate pomegranates and became invincible; in Greek mythology Persephone ate pomegranate seeds, which condemned her to spend some months of the year in Hades, bringing winter on the world. Pomegranate seeds, the colour of blood, are used in making kolyva for memorial services, and as a tonic for the heart in Ayurvedic medicine. Encoded in the surface of the paper are meanings and memories, literal and abstracted reference. They are the beginning of a story"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK.

"Born in the UK, Sara Bowen moved to the north coast of New South Wales, Australia, with her family in 2006 and lives on a bush block near Coffs Harbour. An artist and printmaker, Sara works mainly with paper and slate. Recent bodies of work have included a series of prints and books relating to the annual flood cycle of the Murrumbidgee River and the development of human language. Her work is held in several public collections in Australia and Europe"--Impact 8 website (viewed June 12, 2015).
Notes: Printed in an edition of 3.

Medium consists of 300gsm Somerset rough etching paper with paint, etching ink, pop-up mechanism, paper-cutting.

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.

English and Arabic.