Keep Going (Adelante)

Description:	etching (soft ground and aquatint). Edition of 7.11 The chaos the war brought to Iraq is untenable. The disruption of the society at large will never be the same. The spoils of war affected cultural institutions, centers of learning, schools, markets, etc., making it difficult for people to interact on a social level and exchange ideas. We all learn about our own culture and other cultures of the world-their art, history and literature-through books. The assault to culture and its institutions is an attempt to break the spirit of creators and to erase the collective memory. In my print Keep going (Adelante) I wanted to depict that it is through books that we have learned about the invention of the Arabic alphabet, the invention of the wheel, our environment, etc. All the knowledge contained in books will be preserved-through us, the readers-in spite of the fact that many books were destroyed and many lives were taken on March 5, 2007 when a car-bomb exploded in Al-Mutanabbi Street...the dark hole in the shape of Iraq bears the ancient cultures, the cradle of civilization from which the flower of the desert emerges with its seeds to continue the cycle of life. Blank pages blowing in are the expectations of more poems to be written to inspire us all to continue building and rebuilding our humanity - a woman and a child represent that hope—in this planet earth. To me, poetry is food for the soul and the imagination and while working in the composition of my image, reading and gathering visual elements to include in my print I came across an anthology of poetry written by women Women on war and found the poem And still I rise, a well known poem by Maya Angelou. This poem conveys a sense of hope and courage so needed these days. Sadly, when I was editioning my print, Maya Angelou passed away. Fortunately, she left her spirit in her books and the memory of that sad day in Al-Mutanabbi Street won’t be forgotten if we continue creating, preserving and sharing our cultures (Retrieved from IUCAT November 6, 2019).
Origin:	2014
Created By:	Morales, Gloria
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Publisher:	(San Francisco, CA, USA)
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/1379
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	artists book art bookworks prints

Further information on this record can be found at its source.