Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan

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Ismyrna 2016

Joana Hadjithomas and the artist and poet Etel Adnan met fifteen years ago. They quickly became close, sharing a city that they had never been to: Smyrna, in Turkey. Joana’s paternal Greek family were forced into exile from Smyrna by the Turkish armies after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Etel’s Greek mother was also born in Smyrna and was married to a Syrian officer of the Ottoman Army and exiled in Lebanon after the fall of the empire. Etel and Joana have both lived in an imaginary Smyrna, today called Izmir, without ever setting foot there. Nowadays they are confronted with the transmission of history and trauma, questioning their attachment to objects, places, imaginary constructions and mythologies without images. What is to be done with the sorrow of our parents? Their personal experiences, their stories serve as a background to the region’s changes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the evolution of the borders questioning the notion of identity and belonging.
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Etel Adnan: Words in Exile 2008

The film reconstructs through an array of visual fragments, a multiplicity of languages, of peoples and their identities, the unique portrait of the poet and painter Etel Adnan.
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Axis of Light 2011

Seen through the work of eight leading artists from the Middle East, Axis of Light is a poignant and absorbing observation of the influences of conflict.
Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan

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Most Known for...

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I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another 2012

Etel Adnan's highly influential writings, in French, English and Arabic have been read around the world. Her recent epic poem, Sea and Fog, published by Nightboat Books, in 2012, evokes the sea and the fog as metaphors for power and time, exploring the nature of the individual spirit and the sentience of the natural world. The Otolith Group's film, shot largely in Adnan's Paris apartment, centers on a reading of the first chapter of her poem, Sea. The sound of Adnan's gentle voice, and the quiet but ever present ambient noise in her apartment, create a powerful, meditative atmosphere that draw upon the powers of philosophy to pursue the continuous mutation of matter into velocity. If poetry can be understood as a study in constraint, the film, I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another, can be understood as an experiment in concentration and a study of gestures, that speaks of the mobility of language and the movement of the ocean.