Title: Kitaab
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.

"The theme I chose for my response to the 2007 bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad is the Arabic word for book, kitaab, based on the three-syllable root k-t-b, from which many words having to do with books, writing, booksellers, etc. can be generated. I remembered my own struggles with Arabic in various language programs and drew on kitaab, the first Arabic word I ever learned (or remembered), which was used by one of my professors to illustrate every almost new grammatical rule or structure he wanted to teach us. For this project, I used material from my first Arabic textbook and my own handwritten notes from class. My relationship to Arabic has always been rather ephemeral and the difficulty I have in reading even the simplest phrases suggested a kind of self-generated willful illegibility, which I then made manifest in the book by printing in light inks on painted paper, overlaying motifs on top of one another and imposing a handwritten correction over one of the silkscreened texts. Those familiar with Islamic art may notice that the format of the book (wider than it is tall) echoes early manuscripts of the Qur'an, especially those produced in southern Iraq in the early centuries of Islam. As I note in the premise of my book, I have no real experiences to compare with the bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street, and my response is limited to thinking about my personal engagement with a language not my own, and the capacity of all languages to endure in the face of premeditated violence"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Richard Turnbull is an art historian, printmaker and book artist who divides his time between New York and western Massachusetts. He teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and various other venues. His artists' books, prints and experimental photographs are in various private collections.
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, Cultural property, Destruction and pillage, Arabic language, Grammar, Artists' books, Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, New York (State), New York
People: Richard Turnbull
Time periods: 21st century