Sharjah Art Foundation Library

Iman Mersal: Motherhood and its Ghosts/ (Record no. 6394)

MARC details
000 -LEADER
fixed length control field 02039nam a2200193Ia 4500
001 - CONTROL NUMBER
control field 6394
008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION
fixed length control field 260202s9999 xx 000 0 und d
020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER
International Standard Book Number 9798893380170
245 #0 - TITLE STATEMENT
Title Iman Mersal: Motherhood and its Ghosts/
Statement of responsibility, etc. Translated by Robin Moger
260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC.
Place of publication, distribution, etc. Berkeley;
Name of publisher, distributor, etc. Transit Books;
-- Kayfa Ta
Date of publication, distribution, etc. 2018
300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Extent 150p;
Dimensions 18x13cm
490 ## - SERIES STATEMENT
Series statement Undelivered Lectures
520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC.
Summary, etc. Continuing her investigation into the archive, Iman Mersal sifts through representations of one of history’s most elusive figures—the hidden mother. No one excluded my mother from our joint portrait. It is before me now and I can see for myself that I was with her, but she is a ghost. The picture is a burden: an assault on, and fabrication of, what I remember. It doesn’t make my mother present; it sharpens my desire to resist, to transcend her ghostliness, to rescue what the picture hides. Iman Mersal has only one photograph of her mother, who died giving birth at age twenty-seven. But the woman portrayed in it strikes her as very unlike the one in her fleeting childhood memories, in mood, expression, dress. When Mersal has a child of her own decades later, she begins to wonder whether it’s possible to depict a mother with any degree of fidelity. How to represent—in photography, dream, memory, or writing—an individual whose complex inner landscape has suddenly come under threat of looming archetypes? What is hidden in traditional representations of motherhood? What lies outside the narrative in which motherhood “means giving, the melding of two distinct selves, a love unlimited and unconditional”? Sifting through the archives of motherhood, including journal entries, photographs, and the writings that have informed her own poetic practice, Mersal privileges questions over answers, drifting over arriving, allowing a form of motherhood to exist in these pages unbounded.
546 ## - LANGUAGE NOTE
Language note English
650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
Topical term or geographic name entry element Artist project
9 (RLIN) 9169
650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
Topical term or geographic name entry element Research
9 (RLIN) 9170
700 ## - ADDED ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME
Personal name Mersal, Iman
9 (RLIN) 9171
942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA)
Koha item type Book
Holdings
Withdrawn status Lost status Damaged status Not for loan Collection Home library Current library Date acquired Total Checkouts Full call number Barcode Date last seen Price effective from Koha item type
        Visual Arts SAF Reference Library SAF Reference Library     N81-390 110.8591 6394 02/02/2026 02/02/2026 Book

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