KIM MORSKI

This Land is Your Land/This Land is My Land

Reduction woodcut, letterpress, silkscreen, and relief
8" x 13" x 1.5"
Edition of 5
2010

This book contains two timelines, each corresponding to the other by date. The first side (This Land Is Your Land) contains a series of significant events involving the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. On the other side of the book (This Land Is My Land), each page is dedicated to a major natural disaster that occurred in the United States on the date of a corresponding political event on the other side.

Part of a 2010 body of work exploring the concept of covenant as a sociopolitical, interpersonal, or physical bond, the book’s correlating timelines signify metaphysical or spiritual connections between lands and people, and the shared experience of facing eminent destruction from different, yet coinciding forces.

This book has a dos-à-dos binding structure with accordion folded spreads. The pages were printed on Fabriano Rosaspina paper using a combination of reduction woodcut and relief collagraph printing techniques. The significant dates, in large text on each spread, were printed with wood type on a Vandercook press. The small explanatory paragraphs, along with the timelines on the final spread of each side of the book, were screenprinted.

This book also functions as an object or sculpture, since the binding allows it to be stretched out and stood on end. It forms a physical boundary, suggestive of the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank and Gaza.

In the special collections of Washington University in St. Louis and University of Denver.

Edition is sold out.

All Images © Kim Morski