Project Description

'These are the notebooks of Z.A.B. She was my grandmother and was illiterate. She
gave birth to twelve children, of whom ten lived. To keep in touch with them all she
made herself a telephone directory from an old recipe notebook. To identify each
family member, she made a coded drawing: the one with spectacles, the one with
four sons. The corresponding telephone numbers were recorded as a series of little
lines, which today recalls the ones and zeroes of binary computer language. She had
someone else write the name as well.'

Yto Barrada

Courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg, and Polaris, Paris.

Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation

April 2011