“Contamination” is a photographic work in progress initiated in 2009 that integrates in its compositions two recurrent elements in Mounir Fatmi’s work: books and circular saw blades adorned with religious or poetic calligraphic motifs. The book is employed in order to study its power of transmission and censorship of information and knowledge, while the circular saw blade is used to examine the relations between religious and dogmatic thought and critical thinking. There is a third theme that connects these two sets of issues: language, for which Mounir Fatmi’s work manifests a constant interest. Contamination, in the primal sense, designates the invasion of a living organism by a pathogenic substance and the alteration of its biological reactions. The title of this photographic series is inspired by the viral conception of language as expressed in his time by William Burroughs: “Language is a virus”.