Title: Ex-votos
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).
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
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, England, London
People: Linda Toigo
Time periods: 21st century