“Love doesn’t die when we die. It is our resurrection.”

“Conversation is the beginning of civilisation. It’s the most important moment between people, where we have that link together. Spiritual life is not to do with having a big epiphany. Some people are waiting for that apotheotic moment, which could be the moment of one’s death. But we don’t live all the time in a ‘boom!’ like the atomic bomb. But we do have these little precious moments.” So said Etel Adnan in her 2016 interview for Beshara Magazine, entitled ‘An Artisan of Beauty of Truth’.

In the spirit of conversation we join with many others who celebrate the life and mourn the loss of this extraordinarily intelligent woman, who I first met in the 1980s when she and her partner, Simone Fattal, came regularly to our house in Lagunitas to study The Twenty-Nine Pages, an introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics of unity. We remained in contact ever since. She was working to the very end of her life; last year, she published a book of reflections upon death and mortality, Shifting the Silence (Nightboat Books, 2020) and this year has a major exhibition of paintings –still running – at the Guggenheim in New York (see video below).

Those posting tributes include Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, who wrote on Instagram: “RIP to the great artist and poet Etel Adnan”; Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries who posted: “The world needs togetherness not separation. Love, not suspicion. A common future, not isolation”, and Shiva Balaghi, the Los Angeles-based cultural historian, who posted: “There was passion and compassion in Etel Adnan’s poetry and painting. There was a lifelong commitment to activism, a profound truth in her solidarities.”

Nana Asfour concluded her obituary in the New York Times [/] with words from the writer and critic Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, who wrote that a “fraught dualism between tranquillity and turbulence” permeated all Etel’s work, whether written or painted. She added: “It is as if to say that this is us, we humans as tragically flawed creatures, who are capable of such splendour and ugliness all at once.” In a Twitter post, the Guggenheim wrote: “We mourn the loss of Etel Adnan and celebrate her indelible literary and artistic achievements, which have left a trace on so many people across the world. We are deeply honoured by the current presence of her radiant paintings in Light’s New Measure.”

At her Guggenheim show, Etel is quoted as saying: “To look at the sea is to become what one is.” This very much resonates with her Beshara Magazine Interview, where she said:

The analogy of the waves and the tide is really a beautiful image for spirituality. What makes the tide stop? Why doesn’t it keep going and swallow up all the land? It barely touches its maximum, and then it shoots back from the shore. In the same way, we come close to understanding the beauty of a flower, but then it escapes us – the tide recedes. Water is the closest thing to our minds. We touch it and it’s not there; we hold it and it runs away.

We send our heartfelt condolences to Etel’s companion and partner Simone Fattal.

‘Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure’ is on view through January 10, 2022. Learn more at guggenheim.org [/]

For more on Etel and her work, click here [/] for her website.