Etel Adnan, born February 24th 1925 in Beirut, is a Lebanese-American poet, essayist and visual artist. Polyglot, she writes in French, English and Arab and divides her time between California, France, and Lebanon. This point d’ironie is the result of her different artistic practices.

In 1996 she recalled, “Abstract art was the equivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words, but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.”