Silent Cry

Description:	linocut. Edition of 5. A reflection on what my work in prints as put down in this statement is a reaction to the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street. The colour of my work is an orange-red. The print is from a linocut titled Silent cry. This is all about silent suffering as one of the main implications of an attack on the printed word, and its writers, printers, booksellers and readers. Above all I wish to break the silence and make the silent cry and the silent suffering known to the world by this print. People who are not allowed to express themselves as how they truly are, in words, poems, art, letters, are not free but suppressed and so suffer in silence not in public. The image is about a place with a garden, a place so beautiful but the emotions are all fenced in and suppressed. Silent suffering. A cry for help to break the silence. The orange red stands for the blood that was spilled with the attack on Al-Mutanabbi Street. My process was: I drew the image on the lino, I had made several sketches beforehand and made an abstracted image to show my view on the project. I feel especially right now that we are all in this, this is our street, we are all of us, part of the winding street of booksellers, and readers. A Silent cry is a symbol of the attack and especially the suppressed. I live in Groningen, in the Netherlands, my studio is in Assen, also in the north of the Netherlands. I feel strongly attached to the project just because of what it stands for. Linocut is a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for the relief surface. I chose for an intaglio print which is rather unusual for a linocut, to get an even more powerful effect. The incised lines or rather the sunken areas hold the ink. The ink lies rather thick on the paper and took a long time to get dried. I used linocut and etching ink just to get this effect so I could show my view on the project by my artwork and its dramatic expression (Retrieved from IUCAT November 8, 2019).
Origin:	2015
Created By:	Van Essen, Gwendolyn
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Publisher:	(Assen, Netherlands)
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/1501
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

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