"Painting in Arabic": Etel Adnan and the Invention of a New Language

Abstract

This article deals with Etel Adnan’s complex and original relation with the Arabic language, and with her concern for the situation of wars and destruction in the Arab world. It tries to analyze how, by “painting in Arabic,” Adnan not only finds a solution to her linguistic quest, but also gives word to her political commitment to the region. And finally, “painting in Arabic” makes her one of the main representatives of the Hurufiyya movement, a fundamental modernist pictorial trend in the Arab world.