WOUNDED BOOKS

In her “Wounded Books” series, Christina Mitrentse reflects upon the human, societal, and cultural crisis. The starting point of this series was an ongoing exhibition concerning the 2007 terrorist attack at the central book market of Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, where human lives were lost, and thousands of books were destroyed. Based in London Mitrentse comments on those bloody events through a bloodless, liberating bodily action. She fires at books provided by libraries and archives with a Winchester 4.8 Calibre rifle in a shooting range in Richmond. Books on feminism, psychoanalysis, art; political and religious publications; leather-bound volumes and paperbacks. The wounded and/or ‘dead’ books, their flesh ripped apart by bullets, are instantly transformed into sculptures, fragments of three-dimensional allegorical compositions. At the same time, these peculiar objects document performances deliberately conducted without the presence of an audience. Mitrentse transforms destruction into a creative act, transmuting death into rebirth – just like her mentor, the conceptual artist John Latham, had done in the past. By adopting a stereotypically male sport, the artist breaks into the patriarchal sphere, promoting gender equality humorously and creatively.

Works can be found in special collections, including the V&A National Library, Bodleian Library Oxford, MOCA London, Book Arts at UWE, London College of Communication Library Special Collections (UAL), Library Special Collections Chelsea College of Art & Design, the Library of Philosophy University of Barcelona, Women’s Art Library (MAKE) Goldsmiths University, Book Art Centre NY, the National Library in Baghdad, Senate House Library -Birkbeck University London, The Jewish Museum of Greece and in private collections in Europe. Wounded Books have been featured in the publications : Portable Magic- A History of Books and Their Readers, written byEmma Smith, Penguin Literary Criticism, 2023 | THE WORD IS ART published by Thames & Hudson, written by Michael Petry of MOCA London 2018. Article at Art Corpus: The Wounded Books series as a metaphor for Re-Incarnation | Anna McNay, Arts Writer, London 2013 | Article/Interview at InterArtive: Reading Between the Lines | Dr. Christina Grammatikopoulou, Art Theorist, Spain 2012 | Article/Exhibition Review by Vassilios Doupas on The Art News Paper, Athens October 2019

Bia Papadopoulou , Art Historian & Curator