Al Mutanabbi street, March 5, 2007
By: [Art Hazelwood]
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Art Hazelwood]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: San Francisco, 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; 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.
Notes: Title from title label on cover.

Edition of 16 copies.

Screenprinted images and text printed on one side of a continuous sheet folded accordion style, one end attached to inside of front cover.

"This book is based on the car bombing of a street of booksellers in Baghdad. Beau Beausoleil, a bookseller in San Francisco, initiated this project to memorialize this attack on the culture of the book and prevent it from slipping into forgetting among the many atrocities of the Iraq War. He's asked 130 book artists to contribute--the number of books matching the number of victims that day. This is my contribution. Three from the edition go to the project one of which will be offered to the Iraq National Library in Baghdad. My book, starts with an image of the booksellers street. The next page begins a foldout which begins with the explosion in a death head cloud. Books flying are labeled with different bookseller areas of the world"--Quotation from Art Hazelwood, at Vamp & Tramp booksellers website.

"Art Hazelwood is a printmaker and curator. He has organised political art shows including national exhibitions - Art of Democracy in 2008, and New World Border in 2011. He has curated several museum shows including the traveling exhibition Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present. He is also the author of a book based on the show. Hazelwood's prints and books are in several collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress. His political prints regularly appear in several west coast homeless newspapers"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.