“I am saying to you that we no longer enter forests in the mythic sense. We no longer enter the universe of women, either, we no longer have that feeling of an adventurous entering, of a process that could produce unbearable frights. The harem, like the cloister, is becoming extinct. Everything seems to be given on the surface of things.”

Wilder reads "Of cities and women, Aix" by Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan (1925-2021) was a Lebanese-American writer and painter. Born in Beirut to Greek and Syrian parents, she grew up speaking Greek and Turkish in an Arabic-speaking society. Having been educated in French convent schools, her early writing was in French, although her later work was mostly written first in English. Adnan later lived in Paris and California.

Etel Adnan writes letters to a friend, Fawwaz, from different cities she visits. Adnan painted mountains, and here she dissects the relation between women and the work of Cezanne and Picasso through the landscape surrounding Aix-en-Provence.

This is the second item of a selection of texts sent to us by Wilder Alison. Wilder Alison (b. 1986, Burlington, VT) is an interdisciplinary artist whose recent work includes painting and works on paper.

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