Al-Mutanabbi I
By: Elsi Vassdal Ellis
Contributors: EVE Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: EVE Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: [Bellingham, Washington]
Language: eng
Copyright date: 2011
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
Other titles: Al Mutanabbi Street I
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.
Notes: October 2011.

"I have avoided revisiting Iraq for a few years now. The multi-layers of war and politics, internal and external to Iraq, created a black hole in my creative life. I needed to take a sabbatical from my attention to this war. When invited to participate in An Inventory of Al Mutanabbi Street by Beau Beausoleil, I girded up my loins, so to speak, and opened the Iraq door again. This is the first of three editions on Al Mutanabbi Street. It is a meditation upon the book as container, as cultural artifact, as ideas in corporeal form. It calls out the names of booksellers, book buyers, book browsers who were killed on Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad, Iraq. It also acknowledges the many journalists who have also sacrificed themselves for revealing the truth about Iraq. There are many landscapes explored between the non-linear narrative and the images of slowly decaying books. The reader is gently reminded that we are all moving, some gently, some violently, towards decay, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."--Artist statement.

Signed and numbered by the artist.

Hand sewn coptic binding. Inkjet printed on an Epson Stylus Photo 1400.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.