This is my contribution to “Absence and Presence - A Printmaking Response to the Bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street”. This international artistic project is the fourth in the activities of “al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here!”
I used a strong deckled edge paper. Prior to printing each sheet has been painted with colours made from soil pigments, resembling flames and a flurry of ashes. On the bottom the coordinates of 33 libraries are printed using metal type. It is the locations of libraries burned down and destroid in the past centuries - from Alexandria in 391 BC to Baghdad, Timbuktu and Tripoli in our days.
In the midst of flames and a flurry of ashes a butterfly escaps into safety. Its wings are like the pages of a book. Written on those wings are the fundamental ideas of mankind. Like its precious eggs the butterfly carries them into the heads of readers where they will hatch and grow into thoughts and evenually be reborn as new books.
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