An Inventory of al-Mutanabbi Street
I recently visited a brilliant and thought provoking exhibition at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Following on from a tutorial with Ela, one of the Foundation Degree students who had seen the exhibition and had decided to use it as the inspiration for her final 3rd year project. I love books and books as art forms in their own right and this exhibition had an amazing amount of artistsic books on display. All inspired by a very emotive subject of a bombing in Baghdad.
This exhibition is the result of a project concieved by poet Beau Beausoleil and artist Sarah Bodman to "re-assemble" the "inventory" of reading material that was lost in the car bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street on 5 March 2007 - an attack in which more than 30 people died and more than 100 were wounded.
"The project is both a lament and a commemoration of the singular power of words. We hope that these books will make visible the literary bridge that connects us, made of words and images that move back and forth between the readers in Iraq and ourselves" - The al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition.
The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition is not
an anti-war project, nor is it a healing project. The coalition feels that until
we truly see what happened on this one winding street of booksellers and
readers, on this one day in Baghdad, until we understand all the implications of
an attack on the printed word and its writers, printers, booksellers and
readers, until we see that this is our street, until then, we cannot truly move
forward.
Baghdad's 'Street of the Booksellers' honoured at Manchester's John Rylands library
Christopher Thomond for the Guardian Northerner looks at some of the delicate 'artists' books' which bear witness to the world's determination that free speech will survive in Iraq: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/gallery/2013/mar/05/libraries-iraq-almutanabbi-booksellers-johnrylands-manchester
images taken at the exhibition below:
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