More Lines Exploring Space II
Sumi Perera, UK
100 variable bookmarks which are an extension to a series of artists' books conceived as a lament to the fateful bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street.
This event destroyed many books, booksellers' and book lovers' lives. The aforementioned artist book, More Lines Exploring Space II, is a tribute
and affirmation to the inability to silence or destroy the power of the written word. Paying homage to both Arabic and Western reading practices,
the book was designed be read from either right to left or left to right or in both directions sequentially in a boustrophedon fashion. Lines reduce
in number if read in one direction, to reflect upon the destruction from the aftermath of the bombing. The build-up of lines, when read in the opposite direction, reflected the collaborative efforts of bibliophiles, poets and artists throughout the world congregating and producing work to reflect on this
atrocity and express a united voice to celebrate the power of books and words.

This series of bookmarks are designed to allow the reader to select the order they wish to read a book by vertically splicing them and cutting 'v'
shaped notches at different positions of the height of each bookmark, placing them throughout the pages, and playing with the sequence of
reading patterns. i.e. the highest bookmarked page to be read first, the lowest-last or vice versa.

Like much of Perera's work, the final editorial control of the piece is handed over to the reader. In the artist book MLES II, the letters and text were
replaced by solid lines within the book, and displaced to be scattered haphazardly around the work, echoing the confusion and disarray that was
created from the bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street, and reflecting upon the literal and metaphorical fragments that the survivors were left to pick up.
With the bookmarks MLES III, the reader is invited to make their own clones of this bookmark, by dividing and placing the bookmarks in a trail
throughout the book to create their own narrative.

More Lines Exploring Space II is part of a series of artists' books, book ephemera and installations, currently touring the USA, UK, Canada, Egypt,
Iceland, Australia and Japan. Perera's work utilizes mixed media assemblage techniques combining stitch, incision and printmaking ranging from
digital to traditional methods: etching, aquatint, drypoint, mezzotint, screen print, chine collé, collagraph, embossing etc.

Perera has won a number of prizes and awards and has work held in collections around the world including the Tate Britain; Victoria & Albert Museum;
Yale Centre for British Art, USA; Guanlan Museum, China; Grafisk vaerksted-Naestved, Denmark; Sakima Art Museum, Japan; printROOM, Rotterdam; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Ashmolean Museum Oxford; Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt; SCU Collection, Australia; Brooklyn Library, USA;
ULUS Collection, Belgrade, Serbia; & British Library.

Techniques & Materials: open bite acid etching, aquatint, embossing. Sumi Perera RE

• www.saatchionline.com/sumiperera
• sumi_perera@hotmail.com

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