Al-Mutanabbi Street 2011
Sarah Bryant, USA

     

This book is a tangled list of names printed in Arabic and English, a record of the individuals who perished on March 5, 2007 on Al-Mutanabbi Street. Apart from my earnest hope to honour these dead and my revulsion at an act of violence perpetuated against an intellectual centre, I have no personal connection to Al-Mutanabbi Street or to this tragedy, and did not feel comfortable interpreting the bombing with visual imagery. I included only the names of the dead contained in a structure that I hope conveys a sense of violence and loss. Arabic and western translations of the names emphasise the international nature of the literary and artistic community that is struggling to honour what was lost on that day. Sarah Bryant is a letterpress printer and bookbinder specialising in the production of editioned artist's books under her imprint, Big Jump Press. These books have been featured in exhibitions around the United States and have been acquired by special collections libraries internationally, including The Yale Arts Library, The Houghton Library at Harvard University, The New York Public Library and The Darling Bio-medical Library at UCLA. In 2011, Bryant won the MCBA Prize for her book Biography. Bryant has taught book arts courses for The University of Georgia, The University of Alabama MFA in the Book Arts Program, and Wells College.