We became cosmic. Multidisciplinarity in the life and work of Etel Adnan & Simone Fattal

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Etel Adnan (1925 in Beirut – 2021 in Paris) was a poet, painter, and philosopher and is an important figure in Arab modernism. Simone Fattal (*1942 in Damascus, lives in Paris) is an artist, translator, and publisher and has moved throughout her life between painting, sculpture, and poetry. Resonating with the themes of the exhibition Voices without borders, this discussion reflects on the multidisciplinary nature of the individual and joint creations of these two artists who were also life partners. Their work reveals their shared commitment, both politically and artistically, marked by their sense of radicalism and belief in the power of words. In 1982, Fattal founded the publishing house The Post-Apollo Press to publish Etel Adnan’s novel Sitt Marie Rose, which Adnan wrote in 1978 in response to the horrors of the Lebanese civil war; today it is a classic of anti-war literature. The name of the publishing house reflects the artists’ mutual interest in the Space Age, a pivotal era for both. Space exploration redefined humanity’s place in the universe. Adnan expressed how it fuelled boundless imagination by making the impossible achievable, demonstrating that limitations could be shattered and taboos overcome: “We all became cosmic”.

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