For Etel Adnan, a show in Turkey is a symbolic homecoming
Showing work in Turkey is a personal affair for Etel Adnan: a homecoming of sorts. Of her childhood, the Beirut-born painter – also a poet, tapestry designer, novelist, teacher of aesthetics and librettist – has said: ‘We saw ourselves as an Ottoman family.’ Adnan’s grandfather was a Turkish soldier. Her Damascus-born father, Assaf Kadri, was governor of Smyrna under Ottoman rule. At the Istanbul Biennial in 2015 Adnan exhibited Family Memoirs on the End of the Ottoman Empire (2015), a handwritten text in the form of an accordion-like folding notebook, or ‘leporello’, which mak...
Source: apollo-magazine.com