Ibrahim El-Salahi. Untitled from Prison Notebook

Ibrahim El-Salahi

Untitled from Prison Notebook

1976

Ink on paper from a notebook with thirty-eight ink on paper drawings

Not on view

The defecation bucket and flies

And mosquitoes

The flies and the bucket and prison walls and prison guards

Ants, prison walls, and mice and prison guards

The flies, defecation bucket, and rats

Defecation bucket, the flies, and mosquitoes

Defecation bucket, the flies, and the prison walls

The prison guards, ants, and mice,

And rats, guards, rats, walls, mice

Ibrahim El-Salahi: In the cell, there were ten of us. Packed like sardines. On the concrete floor. No beds, no mattresses, nothing. Each of us was given just a blanket and nothing else. I remember next to the cell there was a bucket that was always flowing toward us. It was terrible.

Publication excerpt from

Ibrahim El-Salahi. Prison Notebook, 1976. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018.

Medium Ink on paper from a notebook with thirty-eight ink on paper drawings
Dimensions 11 1/4 × 6 1/2" (28.6 × 16.5 cm)
Credit Acquired through the generosity of Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, Catie and Donald Marron, Alice and Tom Tisch (in honor of Christophe Cherix), Marnie Pillsbury and Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund
Object number 319.2017.16
Associated work Prison Notebook
Department Drawings and Prints

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