ETEL ADNAN
18 October 2016 – 1st January 2017
Salle d’actualités (level -2)
Visits:
From Tuesday to Friday, 10h-18h
Other days, 10h-19h
Institut du monde arabe
1, rue des Fossés-Saint-Bernard
Place Mohammed V
75236 Paris Cedex 05
Claude Lemand.
“Painter and poet, born in 1925, Etel Adnan is a Lebanese/American. She studied philosophy in Paris, Berkely and Harvard. She writes poetry, essays, stories and plays. She’s a painter, and makes remarkable artist’s books. Her first exhibition happened in California in 1960, while she was teaching philosophy. She exhibited in the United States, England, France, Germany, and the Arab World. Many private and public collections have acquired her works. After spending the major part of her life in California, she resides now mainly in Paris.”
Etel Adnan.
“Among the various works I have produced, I have to mention particularly the artist’s books that I started to make since 1964. They are Japanese "books" that are folded, made in Kyoto. I buy them in San Francisco, New York or Paris, in Japanese stores. I usually write on them poems from the major XXth century Arab Poets, mainly from Badr Shaker al Sayyab. I accompany these hand written poems with watercolours and drawings. I made a point of not using classical calligraphy, although it’s an art-form I value extremely, in order to use my own hand writing for its very imperfection. The result is a real translation of the original Arabic poems into a visual equivalence. This Japanese format - where the paper unfolds - creates an horizontal plane that seems to be infinite, and that goes beyond the traditional frame of painted works. This way, the texts and the images are liberated. I would like to remind the reader that I have been the first Arab painter besides Shaker Hassan al Saïd to start a trend in Arab Art, the one concerning the use of personal, non traditional and calligraphic writing, in Arab Art.” (Etel Adnan)
