‘Identity is like a tree, one day it is happy, one day it loses its leaves, but there is continuity.’¹
Artist Etel Adnan was born in Beirut in 1925 and grew up surrounded by numerous cultures and languages. Since the 1950s she has been working as a writer, philosopher, poet, and painter. In her work she explores questions of language, memory, history, landscape, abstraction, and colour.
Her abstract paintings she understands as poetic writing. She applies vibrating colours in clearly contoured surfaces with a spatula. Many of her recent works – the artist calls them ‘inner landscapes’ – are influenced by memories of Mount Tamalpaïs near San Francisco, where she lived for several decades.
Etel Adnan is considered one of the most important authors in the Arab world. She has published numerous volumes of poetry, a novel, plays, and essays. Innsbruck International will be featuring her radio-poems A Funeral March for the First Cosmonaut (at Kreuzgang Servitenkloster) and Night (Musikpavillon, Hofgarten) created in collaboration with Ulrike Haage.
1 Interview with Vera Kern, 12.07.2012, Qantara.de: en.qantara.de/node/2576

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