Etel Adnan
Mount Tamalpaïs
2015
Wool tapestry
170 x 212 cm
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Etel Adnan spent her life in France, the United States and Lebanon in circular loops of endless back and forth. These movements were dictated by the everyday experience of conflict as well as a profound need for expression, camaraderie and companionship. Mount Tam, as the artist’s subject is affectionately known, is a site in Marin County, California. The peak often served as a visual respite for Adnan, becoming the focus of many of her small canvases and tapestries. It is perhaps in the focus upon the stationary, unyielding formation of a mountain that one’s memory finds its righting scale: one fleeting and fragile.