My Poem Becomes Theirs 2012
Helga Butzer Felleisen, USA
| My Poem Becomes Theirs,
Helga Butzer Felleisen, Brookline, MA, USA, 2011 Mashrabiya, carved screens that ventilate and filter light, are commonplace in the Near East. In Iraq, they are often called shanasheel or 'hanging silk'. My Poem Becomes Theirs is a metaphorical screen. Hand-cut panels of vellum allow me, an outsider, to peer into the world of the booksellers' street. Scroll and pages cross time. Allusion is made to the hanging poems at Mecca. A couplet by al-Mutanabbi emphasises the bond between reader and written word: My poem becomes theirs in its setting On beauty's neck adorned with necklace.* Excisions - marking what is lost - collect on the floor. Clear and elusive, projections of text opalesce like pearls. This book is made in an edition of five. Hand-cut vellum, 93 h x 6.5w in. * Poem 112 of the al-Shawmiyat of the Diwan. Translation by Arthur Wormhoudt, The Diwan of Abu Tayyib Ahmed ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi, 2002. Helga's drawings of hand-cut vellum cross the boundaries of drawing, sculpture and design. Minimalistic, the cut lines reference the natural world. Interjections of pattern or recognisable imagery anchor them in culture. As site-specific installations, the drawings' ever-changing projections onto their context tell stories. www.helgafelleisen.com/ |