Title: My poem becomes theirs
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.

"Memory has always intrigued her. Stateless at birth and an immigrant, Helga grew up between cultures. While traveling, especially as a student of Classical Archaeology, she cultivated a keen awareness of other cultural traditions. She collects traditional Greek and Turkish crafts. Made by hand, they retain memories of those who made them. The calm, repetitive motions that produced them resonate with her. Like shadows in the cave, Helga's art engages memory. Her work is conceptual. It references history and culture. It is contemplative. Although her practice includes a variety of mediums, vellum is her primary material. Smooth, translucent and white, it reflects light. Similar to an archaeological excavation, she cuts away to reveal lines extracted from man-made patterns or drawn from nature. Installed, her work shifts between the disciplines of drawing, sculpture and installation. Cut lines become narrative as air currents, light and vellum intersect. A universal element, water figures frequently as imagery. To Helga, the rhythm of the sea evokes emotions, thoughts and recollections. The tide carves out and fills in again. It binds past with present. Felleisen received her Diploma ('06) and Fifth Year Certificate ('07) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She shows her artwork in solo and group exhibitions. It is included in public and private collections. Helga works in arts-related positions, most recently as coordinator of Hyde Park Open Studios in Boston. She lives in York, Maine, and maintains a studio in Hyde Park"--The artist's personal website (viewed June 23, 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, Artists' books, Vellum printed books, Memory in art, Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, Massachusetts, Brookline
People: Helga Butzer Felleisen
Time periods: 21st century