Née en 1925 au Liban, Etel Adnan suit des études de littérature à la Sorbonne, puis obtient une maîtrise de poésie à Harvard. Elle a publié différents ouvrages (citons notamment Sitt Marie Rose, roman mettant en scène la guerre civile libanaise, traduit en plusieurs langues) et de nombreux recueils de poésie, en français et en anglais. Artiste autodidacte, elle découvre la peinture en s'intéressant aux tapisseries et aux céramiques ; elle commence à peindre à l'âge de 33 ans. Elle a souvent exposé aux Etats-Unis, et tout particulièrement à San-Francisco, mais également au Maroc et au Liban.
Born in 1925 in Beirut to a Muslim Syrian father and a Christian Greek mother, Etel Adnan worked for the French Information Bureau at 16 years of age. She Attended Ecole Superieure des Lettres and taught at the Ahliya School for Girls.
Etel Adnan then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard. She taught philosophy of art at Dominican College of San Rafael, California, and has presented courses, classes, and lectures at over forty universities and colleges throughout the United States.
Adnan creates oils, ceramics, and tapestry. She has also written more than ten books of poetry and fiction, including Sitt Marie-Rose, which has been translated into six languages.
Since 1964, Etel Adnan has been making "artist's books" : folding rolls of Japanese paper onto which she brings together poems and paintings with inks, pastels, and/or watercolors. On these folded "books," poetry becomes handwriting and drawing, and the accompanying paintings create a visual reading of the poems.
Adnan writes in both French and English. She has published an enormous range of works including the internationally recognized novel about the Lebanese Civil War, Sitt Marie Rose.
She lives in Sausalito, California, Paris, and Lebanon.
Expositions personnelles (sélection)
Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA; Galerie Samy Kinge, Paris; Kufa Gallery, London; Gallery 50 x 70, Beirut, Lebanon.
Expositions collectives (sélection)
UNESCO, Paris; Médiathèque, Les Mureaux, France; L'Atelier, Rabat, Morocco; Musée de L'Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.
Publications
Sitt Marie Rose, Etel Adnan, Georgina Kleege, ISBN: 094299633X
The Arab Apocalypse, ISBN: 0942996097
Paris, When It's Naked, ISBN: 0942996208
Here Lies David Gilbert, Karl Roeseler, Etel Adnan, Lydia Davis, Charlotte Carter, Adrian Dannatt, Deborah Levy, James Kelman, A.L. Kennedy, ZZ Packer, ISBN: 0963919253
The Indian Never Had a Horse and Other Poems, ISBN: 0942996046
Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World (Salwa Mikdadi Nashashibi, Laura Nader, Etel Adnan), International Council for Women in the Arts, National Museum of Women in the Arts, 01 Février 1994, ISBN: 0940979268
Journey to Mount Tamalpais: An Essay, ISBN: 0942996011
Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz), ISBN: 0942996216
In/Somnia, ISBN: 0942996488
From A to Z, Poetry, ISBN: 0942996003
The Spring Flowers Own and the Manifestations of the Voyage, ISBN: 0942996143
There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other, ISBN: 0942996283
Where the Rocks Started, Marc Atherton, Etel Adnan, ISBN: 0942996437
Going deep into the world, ISBN: B0006R2MTY
Maroc : L'artisanat créateur, ISBN: 2249274215
