June 2, 2022

Luminance: A Tribute to Etel Adnan

by Lamia Abukhadra | in Art

This summer, Mizna celebrates the life and legacy of the prolific artist, writer, and philosopher Etel Adnan in a series of film and literary programs. Etel Adnan passed away last year at the age of 96, leaving behind a wealth of prose, poetry, and artworks. Her visual and written works manifest images of joy and beauty, pessimism and grief, as well as anticipated and lived catastrophes. Adnan’s thoughtful and fierce approach to her practice serves as an inspiration and will continue to have a deep impact. Mizna’s summer programs in film and literature will highlight the work of Adnan and the ways her significant contributions to the cultural realm continue to radiate in her absence.

FILM PROGRAMS

In June, Mizna Film Series will present the film ISMYRNA by artist and filmmaker duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Joana Hadjithomas met Etel Adnan in the late 1990s. They quickly grew close, bound by links to a city they had never been to: Smyrna, known today as Izmir. They found themselves engaged in questions around the transmission of history and interrogating their attachment to objects, places, and the constructions of imaginaries without images. In the film, their personal experiences and stories serve as a background to the region’s changes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. ISMYRNA will screen alongside one of Adnan’s favorite films, The Lost Film (dir. Hadjithomas & Joreige, 2003), which follows the filmmakers as they track down a copy of their first feature film which disappeared in Yemen.

A virtual screening of ISMYRNA and The Lost Film takes place June 23–26, 2022. Tickets for the virtual screening are pay-what-you-can, available here. For audiences in MInneapolis and St. Paul, an in-person screening will take place on June 22 at the Trylon Cinema.

The June screening will launch a retrospective of films by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige during Mizna’s monthly film series, and will culminate with their latest film, the highly acclaimed Memory Box, which will open Mizna’s 2022 Arab Film Fest at the Walker Art Center. Passes for the monthly series are available here. See the full line-up for the series here.

LITERARY PROGRAMS

In addition to our film programming, the summer 2022 issue of Mizna also includes a tribute to Adnan. The forthcoming issue will feature Adnan’s paintings and tapestries. Omar Berrada, one of Adnan’s frequent collaborators, will contribute a translated essay, “I followed lines I never saw,” originally written for the catalog of the exhibition Ecrire, c’est dessiner, which opened at Centre Pompidou-Metz in October 2021 and was inspired by Etel Adnan’s idea that “writing is drawing.” Curator Marie-Nour Héchaime will interview Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige about the making of their film ISMYRNA and their creative relationship with Adnan. Additionally, writers and artists who have been impacted by Adnan’s life and work will contribute works for an accompanying digital feature on Mizna’s website.

The summer 2022 issue will be released July 2022 and can be pre-ordered now. Order here.

Watch the virtual launch of our summer issue, ft. Ibtisam M. Abujad, emet ezell, Malvika Jolly, Nathalie Khankan, Hannah Sassoon, and Abu Bakr Sadiq.

WATCH HERE

Read Looking Through the Eternal Present– Marie-Nour Hechaime interviews Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

READ HERE

On the one year anniversary of her death, Mizna celebrates the life and legacy of the prolific artist, writer, and philosopher Etel Adnan in a conversation with some of her collaborators and peers, Kazim Ali, Andrea Abi-Karam, and Omar Berrada, moderated by Mizna curator Heba Y. Amin.

This conversation will be pre-recorded and available to view starting November 14, 2022 at 12pm CT.

WATCH NOW

Read “For Etel,” a digital collection of writing by Mizna community members who have been impacted by Adnan’s life. Contributions from Nicole Olweean, Andrew Riad, emet ezell, leena aboutaleb, Mohamed Tonsy, Farah Kader, and Shirine Saad.

READ NOW

Filmmakers and artists, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige question the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of history. Their works create thematic and formal links between photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, and cinema, being documentary or fiction film. Together, they have directed numerous films that have been shown and awarded in the most important international film festivals before having theatrical releases in many countries. The artists are known for their longterm research which is based on personal or political documents, with particular interests in the traces of the invisible and the absent, histories kept secret such as the disappearances during the Lebanese Civil War, a forgotten space project from the 1960s, the strange consequences of internet scams and spams, or the geological and archaeological undergrounds of cities.

Born in Beirut, Etel Adnan moved to California in the 1950s and built a painting practice inspired by her cross-cultural experiences and spiritual engagement with the natural world. She creates her intimate, small-scale compositions with a palette knife instead of a paint brush, which results in rich, geometric fields of color that evoke sunsets, valleys, and mountains. Mount Tamalpais, a peak in Marin County, California, has been a frequent subject. Adnan studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and established herself as a poet, academic, and essayist before she began to make art. A 2012 presentation at Documenta 13 brought Adnan particular acclaim. She has exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Zurich, Marrakesh, and Los Angeles, among other cities, and her work belongs in the collections of the British Museum, M+, the Centre Pompidou, the Sharjah Art Museum, the Tate, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Adnan has also produced drawings, tapestries, films, and ceramics.