Mark Prince
Mark Prince
Image Credit: Mark Prince
Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence
Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies"
November – December 2022
The Beirut Picture
The Beirut Picture, a work in progress, could be described as an anti-memoir, in that although it developed out of biographical material associated with the writer’s mother – an Iraqi Jew who emigrated to England as an adolescent in 1950, when her family was forced to leave Iraq along with almost all of the country’s Jewish population – the material is approached sceptically, as a pretext for an enquiry into what can be known of the past, given the limitations of the forms through which it comes down to us. By default, sources – images, language, objects – become subjects. The work’s form is fluid, both anecdotal and analytical, spanning biography, essay and fiction. A speculative process of reconstruction finds itself torn between attempting to produce a transparent account and exposing its means of doing so.
Mark Prince is an English writer based in Berlin. He writes about contemporary art for a range of publications, including Art Monthly, Art Review, Frieze, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America and Afterall. His essays have appeared in several monographs and his poetry has been published in various journals and periodicals. He has lectured on the Art Writing and Curating BA and MA courses at Goldsmiths and Central Saint Martins in London. His writing on art has frequently returned to the theme of whether, and if so how, art and literature connect, or fail to connect.