Title: A thousand words
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 wanted my image to be reminiscent of the scene after the unsuspected explosion across the site somewhere between the familiar and unfamiliar, recognition and loss. Though I practice traditional techniques in printmaking, I also work in unconventional materials and technologies associated with advances in the billboard and industrial printing industry. Themes of sleep, migration, drowning, falling, presence + absence fill my museum exhibition themes and public art installations"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Derek Michael Besant is well known for his unorthodox use of materials and technology in creating exhibitions, installations and collaborations as a Canadian artist. The hybrid forms he realizes often include soundtracks that relate to his themes of memory, language, and the body as metaphor"--The artist's website (viewed May 18, 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, Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, Alberta, Calgary
People: Derek Michael Besant (1950-)
Time periods: 21st century