New Exhibition at the Irish Museum of Art (June 5 – September 13th 2015)
A selection of Adnan’s enigmatic and colourful oil paintings will showcase her use of rapid, thick stokes representing the landscapes of California and the Mediterranean Sea. These works will appear alongside a series of delicate leperellos where the transcribes of poems are recorded on unfolding urban landscapes, fusing Adnan’s parallel practice as artist and writer. The exhibition will also include a black and white film, poetry and the recordings of the artist reading from some of her most recent published poems and writings.
Etel Adnan Opens Solo Show in Hong Kong
Lebanese-born artist Etel Adnan opened her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong at White Cube on June 4, featuring new paintings that demonstrate her fluid brand of abstraction and finely honed sense of color.
Wall Street Journal, “Why the Art World Has Fallen for 90-Year-Old Etel Adnan”: February 9, 2015
The Beirut-born poet, essayist and artist—who found fame late in life with her small-scale paintings and forceful prose—has two simultaneous shows this spring at Galerie Lelong in Paris and New York City
The New York Times: “Far From Home, an Arab Summer,” July 17, 2014
“Most of our New York museums give us gussied-up versions of what we already know. The New Museum was created almost 35 years ago to do the opposite, to give us art we barely knew existed. With “Here and Elsewhere,” it thrillingly fulfills that mandate…. Ms. Adnan, who was born in Beirut in 1925, and now lives in France and California, also has paintings in the show. But her most engrossing contribution is the typescript of her extraordinary book of poems “The Arab Apocalypse,” replete with hand-drawn symbols and annotations.”
“A standout at this year’s all-over-the-map Whitney Biennial, this Lebanese-American poet and painter shows no signs of slowing down as she approaches ninety”
The New York Times: May 2, 2014
“The Lebanese-American writer and painter Etel Adnan, 89, commands a small but prominent corner of the current Whitney Biennial, her landscapes and accordion-fold books amounting to an oasis of painterly concentration on a floor of the museum given to diffuse mixed-media experiments.
Her concurrent solo at the two branches of Callicoon Fine Arts gives us a little more room to work with, allowing us to appreciate her confident way with both oil and watercolor. (It coincides with the publication of a new two-volume book of Ms. Adnan’s writings, by Nightboat Books.”
Etel Adnan in All Her Dimensions
Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art
Until 6 July 2014
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar presents an exhibition of the work of Lebanese-American visual artist, poet, playwright and essayist Etel Adnan in All Her Dimensions that is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Jim Quilty for The Daily Star: Of Etel Adnan and superstring theory, April 11, 2014.
City Lights Blog: Etel Adnan in Conversation with Lisa Robertson, April 10, 2014.
The Spring 2014 issue of BOMB features an interview with poet, painter, and essayist Etel Adnan, whose most recent book, To look at the sea is to become what on is, gathers, in two volumes, fifty years of her writings. She spoke with the poet and essayist Lisa Robertson in Paris. What follows is a small portion of that conversation with Adnan, who Robertson describes as “… a philosopher. And she is a painter. In her world, each of these activities gives its images and its movements to the others—whatever an image is.”
Callicoon Fine Arts: April 3 – May 23, 2014
Callicoon Fine Arts is presenting paintings and other works by Etel Adnan at two of its New York spaces in an exhibition which is to run until 23 May 2014.
The eponymously-titled exhibition is to take place at 49 Delancey Street and 124 Forsyth Street, New York; each individual location is to demonstrate one single aspect of the Lebanese artist’s visual media. 124 Forsyth Street is to display a selection of the artist’s leporellos: large paper books which unfold in an accordion-like manner with the help of an intelligent folding and construction technique. The works, which expand greatly in size when opened, date back to 1968 when Adnan created Late Afternoon Poem, a leporello of text that would be otherwise unpublished. Letters intermingle with splashes of watercolour paint in an evocation of warfare and its disordered aftermath. Meanwhile, 49 Delancey Street gives the visitor a chance to discover an alternative aspect of Adnan’s artistic output; this time focusing on painting. The works on display represent a crucial motif of the artist’s work, Mount Tamalpais, north of San Francisco, which frequently appears as a source of inspiration and as a central object in many of her works.
Adnan’s art shows power of landscape: Galleria Continua Beijing, April 4, 2014
Writer and visual artist Etel Adnan’s solo exhibition at Galleria Continua Beijing displays her recent exploration – not only on her familiar canvas but also her ink-on-paper creations.
As always she depicts no humans in her works, only landscapes. The small-format oil paintings continue her passion for the sceneries of Mount Tamalpais near her residence in San Francisco, while the ink paintings were inspired by her impressions of San Gimignano, a medieval hill town in Italy. Born in Beirut, Adnan is the daughter of a Syrian Muslim father and a Greek Christian mother. Now 89, she is recognized as one of the most complex figures of contemporary culture.
11 am-6 pm, daily except Monday, until April 13. Galleria Continua Beijing, 798 Art Zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Lu (Road), Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5978-9505.
A children’s story by Etel Adnan titled, “A STORY: Sambouba and the Palm Tree”, was recently published in the anthology, KINDERGARDE: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children, edited by Dana Teen Lomax. This Small Press Traffic-sponsored project features avant-garde writers from across the country who submitted work especially for children. The result is an award-winning anthology that offers young people new ideas about what poetry, story, and performance can be. KINDERGARDE is America’s first avant-garde anthology for children of all ages. I scream! You scream! We all scream for experimental poetry! Now available from Small Press Distribution here.
Sea and Fog by Etel Adnan (Nightboat Books, 2012) is the winner of 2013 LAMBDA Literary Award for Poetry.
“Etel Adnan’s new collection, named for the elements on which it meditates, offers darkly contemplative verse pondering the contemporary human condition.”
—Jocelyn Heath for LAMBDA Literary
Sea and Fog by Etel Adnan (Nightboat Books, 2012) is the winner of 2013 California Book Award for Poetry.
Etel Adnan at Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg
November 2, 2012–January 12, 2013
In the wake of Beirut-born Etel Adnan’s well-received contribution to Documenta 13 earlier this year, Steffen Zillig considers the limits of a biographical reading of Adnan’s works.
Download a review here.
Etel Adnan at the Base of the Mountain, a review by Maymanah Farhat for Jadaliyya.
Download the review here.
November 30, 2012.
Homage to Etel Adnan, now available from The Post-Apollo Press.
Compiled on the occasion of Arab American poet and painter, Etel Adnan’s receipt of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, HOMAGE TO ETEL ADNAN is a collection of original writings written in tribute by friends, colleagues and admireres of Etel Adnan and her work.
November 2012
The New York Times mentions of Etel Adnan’s participation in Documenta 13.
June 15, 2012.
The Lebanon Daily Star writes of Etel Adnan’s participation in Documenta 13.
April 24, 2012
Etel Adnan’s work is featured in “The Art Of Friendship” at New Britain Museum of American Art. Artist George Deem and His Friends Explore Notion Of Who Created An Artwork?
April 23, 2012
Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse has now also been published in Germany and Turkey.
April 2012
“Poetry Month: Inspiration, Community, Tradition.” Frank Sherlock. Exit Strata, April 2012.
On In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country
Small Press Traffic Tribute to Etel Adnan
When deeply compelled by a writer’s project, Small Press Traffic selects a Lifetime Achievement Award to a living writer of distinction. Past recipients of this award have included Barbara Guest, Jackson MacLow, Carl Rakosi, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser and Beverly Dahlen. In 2010, Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist Etel Adnan was selected to be recognized. Her project of writing and art continues to be both equally complicated and sublime. She depicts with deft and deep prowess the terrible labyrinths of political power and silence, identity and memory, and the “barely perceptible discouragements that make up day-to-day living.” Below, you will find the contributions from a variety of writers and artists who have graciously supplied their thoughts on Adnan’s work and influence.
Ammiel Alcalay, Anne Waldman, Ben Hollander, Robert Grenier, Brandon Shimoda, Cole Swenson, Csaba Polony, David Buuck, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Jen Benka, Joanne Kyger, Lynne Tillman, Megan Pruiett, Michael McClure, Nancy Peters, Roger Snell, Sharon Doubiago, Simone Fattal, Stacy Szymaszek, Stephen Motika, Steve Dickison, Thom Donovan
Forthcoming books:
Selected Poems edited by Thom Donovan and Brandon Shimoda (Nightboat Books)