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For Etel Adnan, ‘silence is the preparation of things to come’. The late artist, poet and philosopher comes face to face with the contemplation of death in her final book, Shifting the Silence (2020). Published one year before her death, her poetry tangles you in her unrelenting prose that seem to trace and circle every dimension of her being, penetrating through the thickness of time. Witnessing a seemingly never-ending conversation she has with her own morality, this book reaches into the very soul of what it means to find clarity and stillness.
Etel Adnan was born in 1925, in Beirut, Lebanon. After receiving a scholarship from the Sorbonne at 24, she moved to Paris to study philosophy, and continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. While working as a professor of philosophy in Northern Carolina in the late 1950s, she started to paint. Painting became an act of resistance for Adnan; after Algeria’s war of Independence, Adnan proved her solidarity with Algeria by refusing to write in French. She declared that rather, she wanted to begin “painting in Arabic”.
She describes her writing as ‘pessimistic’ due to her political affiliations. She has said “It seems to me I write what I see, paint what I am.”. When it comes to Adnan’s paintings and prints, there has also been a sense of peace and finality to them. Her prints exude energy with their vibrancy – abstractly rendering mountains, oceans and the sky. Her paintings and prints suggest she is visualising an after-image, a memory of her visual encounters such as contemplating forms in nature. She said to Hans Ulrich Obrist in an interview, “A painting is finished, like a conversation is finished. You have this feeling that you said it, and that if you add, you will clutter.” The simplicity and stillness to her paintings juxtapose the ponderous and tortured nature of her writing.
Having seen some of her final prints at the exhibition ‘Memories’ at Cristea Roberts Gallery in London, simple yet vast in their contemplative nature, I was drawn to how different her paintings and writing appear to her final days. She appears to have created two versions of inner and eternal landscapes, both affected by the same inner dimensions of experiences yet dissimilar in almost every way. However, I have tried to explore her practice as one, observing both her prints and poems in tandem. Below I have paired prints from the exhibition with exerts from ‘Shifting the Silence’, as it is in her writing that she explores the shifting of the tides, and in her paintings, where she finds silence:
‘I don’t hear many things, as my hearing is poor, and welcome this form of rest. I need nights to spill on my days, want to roam the forests, run into abandoned castles, I want to see rivers hidden in unexpected valleys. I want the sun to be soft.’
Etel Adnan (2020). Shifting the silence. New York Nightboat Books, p. 60
‘We have our own private mountains, but are they already too tired from waiting for us? I have no roads to them, no wires. In their splendour let them be.’
Etel Adnan (2020). Shifting the silence. New York Nightboat Books, p. 7
‘Yes. The shifting, after the return of the tide, and my own. A question rushes out of the stillness, and then advances an inch at a time: has this day ever been before, or has it risen from the shallows, from a line, a sound?’
Etel Adnan (2020). Shifting the silence. New York Nightboat Books, p. 7
‘Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate, return on its steps. I can watch other flowers grow and become what they are.’
Etel Adnan (2020). Shifting the silence. New York Nightboat Books, p. 68
‘This has taken me into the core of silence that underlines the universe: underneath the mesh of sounds that never cease theres’s a strange phenomenona, a counter-reality, the rolling of silent matter.’
Etel Adnan (2020). Shifting the silence. New York Nightboat Books, p. 68
‘Sounds are raining. How many tomorrows do I have to worry about?’
Etel Adnan (2020). Shifting the silence. New York Nightboat Books, p. 8
Images: courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. Paris; © Etel Adnan
Memories | Etel Adnan & Howard Hodgkin at Cristea Roberts, London, 1-16 September 2023
