An Al-Mutanabbi Street Event in Brisbane

The 5 March 2015 marks the eighth anniversary of the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street,

the street of booksellers and book culture in Baghdad since the eighth century.

30 people were killed, 100 wounded and countless numbers of books destroyed or burned.

This year we can also remember the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and the recent burning and destruction of books in Mosul in Iraq.

Events and readings have been scheduled in different countries to remember this event by the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here members.

This year an event will take place at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, organised by artist Peter Annand who also participated in the artists books and printmaking sections of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project.

A Soiree, including recitation of Arabic texts, music and readings from the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here anthology will take place at 5 pm on 17th March in the UQ Library Conference Room. 

An installation of boats made from bookmarks and called Passages, relating to the Australian experience of refugees, has been installed today in the foyer area of the University of Queensland Library.  These books have been made by a number of participating artists, and there will be workshops in the Library on Sunday 8 March  and Friday 20 March  from 2 - 5 pm, where anyone interested can make a boat that will be added to the installation.

My boat, made from a combination of my own handmade ink bookmarks and found library bookmarks is contained in a book and opens out to display.

David Symons and Peter Annand did a great job hanging my book in the installation and I decided to call it 'The Magic Carpet'.

An Al-Mutanabbi Street Collaboration

The Presence and Absence of the Light

I participated in the Artists Book section of ‘Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here’  Project with a book called ‘Absence’ and when the call came out for the printmaking project called ‘Absence and Presence’ I was delighted to have the opportunity to explore this idea of the destruction 

of culture further.

  

I spoke to an artist friend, Jack Oudyn, with whom I  have collaborated on projects in the past, and who also intensely supports the rights of freedom of speech and democracy.  We felt that if we collaborated on the print we would be making a statement about support and solidarity between artists, particularly our fellow artists under threat in Iraq.  After much thought and discussions about freedom of speech, around the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, France, we started work on the print.  Since that time there have also been reports of the destruction and burning of books in Mosul in Iraq.

The print is a combination of two prints, the first is a linocut of an Islamic screen which has openings to let in the light of the world, culture and literature, and others that are blocked by an aggressive arrow pointed shape moving across the screen.

The second digital print of abstract asemic writing underlies the first print.  It also contains the jumbled letters of the words Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, but only fragments of the print are visible through the openings in the screen, and these letters do not appear in their entirety in the displayed print.

The composite print has a 3D element in that the openings in part of the screen have shutters (or perhaps book covers) that need to be opened when the print is on display.

Five of the edition of  ten prints of  The Presence and Absence of the Light are on their way to the United Kingdom and the United States for inclusion in the 'Absence and Presence' exhibitions held as part of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project.

On Exhibition

I've been a bit quiet here lately but some new work has been happening behind the scenes - more about that soon!  

Meanwhile a few of my books have been travelling to exhibitions.  Bloom is included in Bookworks 2014 at the Skylight Gallery in the San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco USA as part of the Pacific Center for the Book Arts Exhibition to be held from 21 June to 6th September 2014.

The other day I received the catalogue of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here exhibition that was held at the Center for Book Arts in New York  last year and included my book Absence.  This exhibition has now opened at the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County, Rochester, New York, USA from 2 June to 2 September 2014.  It's always great when your books just keep travelling and appearing in exhibitions!

Paper, Scissors, Uluru is a collaborative book I made last year with Jack Oudyn.  It's just had an outing at the Art on Show Awards at Mackay in Queensland, presented by the Mackay Show Association from 16 - 19 June 2014.  It was exhibited in the Artspace Mackay Artist Book Award section.

Remembering 5th March 2007

  Absence by Helen Malone

The 5th March 2014 marks the seventh anniversary of the Bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street, the street of booksellers and book culture in Baghdad since the 8th century.  30 people were killed,100 wounded and countless books destroyed and burned.

Many events and readings have been scheduled in different countries to remember this event by members of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project.

My offering to never forget this day is to share one of the most powerful books made for the Al-Mutanabbi Street Project, the book I Dare You, bound, burned, filmed and recorded by Stephanie Sauer which can be seen on vimeo here.

The video lasts for 15 minutes, the amount of time it takes to recite the list of sites where books were burned or destroyed throughout known history, while you see Stephanie's book being made and subsequently burned.  

 "I Dare You is my hymn to each and every page, person, symbol, codex, mural, tapestry, scroll, carving and oral account throughout history that has been banned, shamed, destroyed or subverted."

Stephanie Sauer

Al-Mutanabbi Street in New York

 

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here is an exhibition of artists' reponses to the car bombing on 5 March 2007 of Al-Mutanabbi Street, the cultural and intellectual centre of Baghdad. Approximately 260 artists have contributed artists books to this project, and this major travelling exhibition will be on display in many countries and venues over the next few years.  The Center for Book Arts in New York have organised an exhibition of all the books to be held simultaneously over five venues for the next few months.

 

Centre for Book Arts, New York

Columbia University Libraries

Alwan for the Arts

International Print Centre New York

Poet's House

 

My book for this project Absence is included (although I do not know at which particular venue it is on display) along with the books of a number of other Australian artists - Janis Nedela, Peter Lyssiotis, Monica Oppen, Tim Mosely, Penny Peckham, Sara Bowen, Deanna Hitti, Heather Matthew, Amanda Williams, Peter Annand, Marie-Therese Wisniowski, JP Willis, and Antonietta Covino-Beehre.

 

You can browse the galleries of artists books in this exhibition here.

 

PS Thanks to Anna Mavromatis for letting me know that her book, Sara Bowen's and mine are all on exhibition at the Center for Book Arts.

  

 

Absence

 

On March 5 2007 a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street, the street of booksellers in Baghdad and the cultural centre for the literary and intellectual community.  Thirty people were killed and one hundred wounded.  This attack on writers and booksellers compelled San Francisco bookseller, Beau Beausoleil to show an expression of solidarity with the formation of art and writing project Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. 

 

 I joined the project at the beginning of this year after seeing a call for 15 book artists on Sarah Bodman's Book Arts site.  The number of artists books in the project was to be 260, double the number of casualties and the 15 new artists were called to replace others who had dropped out.  Three books had to be sent to Sarah Bodman by April 30, as the worldwide exhibitions have already commenced.  It is planned to have an exhibition in the National Library of Baghdad and a full set of the books will be donated to the National Library's collection. On both the above mentioned sites you can find more details about the project and see the books. 

 

It was not an easy task to look at all the books already submitted and to create something original within the guidelines.  My first idea had already been used by a couple of other people in different ways, and I was not happy with using it yet again.

 

I came up with another idea to reflect on absence and loss using a mathematical infinity tiling pattern as a metaphor for the intellectual community and Islamic culture, and to act as a map of the district, and was pleased that this idea did not appear to have been used. 

 

 

 These tiling patterns have been used since medieval times on architectural surfaces and in book illumination. So I started work on Absence and made an edition of 6 books.

 

 

The book contains inkjet prints of drawings on Fabriano Artistico paper with gouache painting added later.  The French simplified binding is of Lamali paper/fabric with a soft leather spine and a collaged fragment of calfskin vellum. 

 

I intended the book to express hope for the future with the return of the normal patterns of cultural and intellectual life.