ETEL ADNAN

The exhibition takes its title from Adnan’s poem Surge (2017) which asks: ‘Why do seasons who regularly follow their appointed time, deny their kind of energy to us?’ The poem ends with ‘we deal with a permanent voyage, the becoming of that which itself had become.’ Reading Adnan’s poetry, the recurring themes of nature vis-à-vis the passage of time demonstrate a contemplation of one’s journeys in physical and inner spaces. Adnan continues this mode of inquiry in her visual language, containing multitudes within each piece and making room for interpretation and exploration.

A highlight of Seasons is ‘Planètes’, her new body of paintings that depicting planets. During the pause of her activities under quarantine, Adnan reflected on the current pandemic; turning her eye for the landscape upwards as she began painting imaginary planets and satellites in vibrant skies, a completely new subject for the artist whose oeuvre spans six decades. The ‘Planètes’ series is conceived in a vertical format, with a consistent circle of colour appearing in varied forms. In some works, the circle occupies and fills the composition lengthwise and in others, seems to be moving off the canvas, leaving a semi- circle. An element representing an object from our daily lives—a bicycle or an apple—grounds the composition.

In the early 1960s, Adnan discovered the mediums of wool tapestry and leporello. When her works were presented at Documenta 13 in 2012, the artist’s distinctive use of these materials was quickly established as key tenets of her practice. In the presentation, a lone mid-size tapestry was laid on a low table as a centrifugal anchor flanked by thirty-eight paintings. Inspired by her early exposure to Persian carpets, the artist had sought to realise her early designs over decades, engaging various international weavers before working with the historic Aubusson atelier PINTON. The unfolding of the leporellos included in the exhibition—accordion-folded booklets that reveal panoramic illustrations— immediately draws a kinship to Adnan’s literary practice and the act of reading. ‘I realised how much materials, for artists, are things that mediate thought... how much they become the elements of one’s expression, and instead of being just a support, they become in a way a co-author of one’s work,’ writes Adnan.