AlieNation/SepaRation

About this book

"Funded by the Pew Foundation for Arts and Heritage, Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary brought five artists into conversation with Syrian and Iraqi individuals resettled in Philadelphia. Driven by questions about displacement and refuge, history and experience, the project explores art's capacity to build empathy and create a deeper sense of belonging. Cummins began the task of creating an artist's book for Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary by interviewing four participating families. ... Out of over one hundred transcribed pages, Cummins selected forty-eight excerpts, which she then pieced together to create a narrative arc. ... Text blocks are severed, then reprinted as quarto-sections on corresponding pages of four separate books. As in the case of the resettlers themselves, these stories must be reunited in order to be read, understood, and made whole again. Since the structure is also two-sided, with half the pages printed upside down, the reader is forced to puzzle out where and how to begin, and what order in which to read the pages"--Prospectus