Etel Adnan ‘Going Through Something of a Moment’

The Daily Star reports today that Etel Adnan, “the octogenarian grande-dame of Lebanese arts and letters” is “going through something of a moment.”

The sentence made me a bit worried about Adnan, but apparently it’s not that sort of moment.

Two of her books have been re-issued: the classic Sitt Marie Rose and her In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country. A performance piece based on the second work played in Beirut last week. And there was a conference on Adnan’s work last week, too.

What’s more, now the Sfeir-Semler gallery is showcasing a selection of Adnan’s paintings and drawings. The Daily Star notes: “for someone who has made her living from text, these works are strikingly non-verbal.”

The paintings are apparently a cross between abstraction and landscape, and: “An almost delirious sense of light pervades these canvases, as though the viewer is on the verge of sunstroke.”