Two
|
Australian Artists' Books to |
Edited by Gali Weiss, Barbara Kameniar and Matthias Tomczak
Two Trees is a book of women’s artists’ books, made up of Australian images and Afghan stories. It is a book of women’s strength and creativity, of women’s capacity to reach out to one another across time and space, across culture and difference, across distance and separation, and to find a space in which to touch one another in unanticipated ways.
The artists’ concertinas, like the Afghan women’s stories written upon them, are diverse. Like all artists’ books, each is a work of art in its own right, reflecting something unique and distinctive about the individual artist, their work, and their desire to connect with women in Afghanistan.
Following a tradition of artists’ books that is frequently traced back to the work of William Blake in the late 18th century, these books confound simple definitions of what is understood to be art and what is understood to be a book. For like Blake’s work, they are simultaneously both. And like the work of the many and varied 20th century artists who also took up this form, these books blur the boundaries between art and politics.
They are in no apparent way “political art” and yet the sharing of marks on paper – some brush strokes, some print marks and others writing – is a profoundly political act revealing an equally profound political intent: “Afghan women be strong, we are with you. We are women too. We stand in solidarity with you. We choose to act with you in our hearts and minds. You are not forgotten.”
Each book left Australia complete, and yet each went to Afghanistan to be completed. As each letter in the writing joins each other letter to form a word, and then a sentence and then a story, so each book has been added to and then joined with each other book until all books have come together to form this one new book, Two Trees.
|
