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

My home

My papers, pen, brush

My daughter

My son, my wife

My friends

The neck grew longer,

Like a camel’s, a dinosaur’s.

A python coiling around

Death rattle on a bird’s nest

And the martyrs offered prayers to the chaste souls of martyrs.

And tears outpoured.

Throat drained.

Lips dried up.

Utterance cracked.

When the word’s stake broke

At the cross point of time and place,

When we lost the drive to fight our internal weaknesses,

Man died.

He slaughtered his own brother.

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 319.2017.22
Associated work Prison Notebook
Department Drawings and Prints

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