Disappearances Appearances Publishing: Sharajah

The immersion in the history of certain publishers, exist in the library archive of Abd Al-Rahman Munfi, reveals the role of publishing in Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa as an instrument of power and demonstrates a strong involvement of political ideologies and the colonial power in the production of knowledge. Different publishing strategies were applied to disseminate ideologies, to unflod ideas and to elude censorship. The five framed prints Index Cards of Publishers, 1 – 5 illustrate various strategies by telling stories of five publishers.

The table sculpture Black Landscapes White Gaps presents a re-reading of the library archive of Abd Al-Rahman Munifs through various statistical interpretations and diagrams. These evaluations are based on a database, created by Fehras Publishing (OMAR Nicolas, Sami Rustom, Kenan Darwich) Practices and cataloging 9191 holdings of the private library of the author. 

The statistics and diagrams provide information about the history of publishing in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa region, and attempt to establish a link between political events, ideologies, intellectuality and migration through the experience of publishing. Despite their claim to provide facts, these statistics and diagrams are inherently contradictory and full of gaps, because they use the moment of private collecting and archiving by an author like Munif as an approach to create a historical narrative.