An inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street
By: Grendl Löfkvist
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: Cloven Hoof Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [Oakland, California]
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; Letterpress printing; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: "I'm a press operator at Inkworks Press in Berkeley. Inkworks is a commercial offset print shop, and I'm a job printer, perhaps something like the four brothers who ran a small print shop on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Three of those four brothers were killed in the bombing. This identity helps me locate this tragedy in a way that's very personal and relevant for me as a printer. I see our obligation as printers, printmakers, artists, poets, and writers is to use OUR weapons to call attention to the crimes against humanity that have been committed and are currently being committed in our names by our government. We must never be silent"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Grendl Löfkvist, president of APHA's Northern California Chapter, is an instructor in the Visual Media Design Department at City College of San Francisco. She currently teaches courses in graphic design history, letterpress printing, and book arts. She also teaches letterpress printing and blackletter calligraphy at the San Francisco Center for the Book, and is a press operator at Inkworks Press"--Artist's statement from the American Printing History Association's website (viewed June 30, 2015).
Notes: Printed in an edition of 9.

Material: Ondine typeface by Adrian Frutiger, linoleum cuts, photopolymer plate from Logos Graphics, shards of broken glass from the streets of Oakland.

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.

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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.