Khat wa Rasm (Line and Hand-drawing)

At the end of sight the sky blends with the earth: physics.
At the end of vision the sky blends with the earth: dream.
And if the physics is invalidated, the dream remains.
-Stations beyond Death by Shawqi Abdel Amir

Etel Adnan's 1986 leporello, Khat wa Rasm (Line and Hand Drawing), is a beautiful work that weaves the ethereal verses of the 1983 poem, Stations Beyond Death, with Adnan’s hand-writing and visual marks. The poem which was written by the Iraqi poet and a friend of Adnan’s, Shawqi Abdel Amir, is combined with watercolour, ink and pencil marks to create an expressive and abstract journey of language, colour, shape, and form.

Adnan began creating leporellos – a book format with folded concertina-style pages – in the mid-1960s after being introduced to the traditional Japanese art format by Rick Barton in California. She initially produced works that explicitly used Arabic poetry, as shown by this 1986 work. Drawn to the freedom that comes from manipulating Arabic writing – the ability to stretch out each letter and layer them – and determined to reject French literature as a form of creative resistance to colonialism and imperial wars, Adnan's earlier leporellos transformed beloved Arabic poetry into visual art through her mobile landscapes of word and image.

Since Adnan could not write in Arabic herself, she turned to regional poets for their words and was attracted to writers from across the Arab world, this includes the Lebanese-Syrian poet Yusuf al-Khal, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Syrian poet Adunis and more. She felt particularly passionate about the new generation of Arabic poets in the early 1980s, expressing that they were more modern, and more courageous than the poets who came before them. Among these writers were Iraqi poets, which she specifically referenced in her early experimentation with leporellos. In fact, the first poem she transcribed was written by the Iraqi poet, Badr Shakir al Sayyab, who was considered a pioneer in rejuvenating contemporary Arabic poetry. Contextually, in the 1980s, when Adnan created Khat wa Rasm, Iraq was facing what went on to be the 8-year Iran-Iraq War. The experience of warfare and cultural changes in Iraq after 1980 translated into new poetic developments and literary themes, which was of specific interest to Adnan, who took a radical anti-war stance. Adnan was also intrigued by philosophy and spirituality in Arab contexts, specifically Sufi Mystism expressed through poetry which she was a dedicated reader of. Thus, she gravitated toward Iraqi poets who not only shared similar social and political sentiments to her own, but also expressed a level of spiritual and philosophical consciousness in their work. Essentially, Adnan selected poetry for her leporellos that captured ideas in Arabic that she could not express herself in written language, and she used drawing and painting to provide counterpoints or emotional and intellectual responses to the words and concepts she read. Additionally, it is not only the poem’s content that captures elements of spirituality but the act of creating the leporello that itself. Adnan perceived the experience of making a single leporello as a religious one, and the process of starting and completing a work as a voyage.

Made in California in 1986, this 28-page leporello features the 1983 poem, Stations Beyond Death. Shawqi Abdel Amir tells a story of life, and death through his philosophical verses. His poetic narration is met with Adnan's whimsical, free marks on paper, creating a beautiful dialogue between the fluency of the Arabic language and Adnan's characteristic artistic style. The words of the poem are placed across the scroll spontaneously and fluidly. Adnan leaves some pages without any words at all, creating strictly visual pages of vibrant colour, movement, and rhythm. In others, she places words as the central focus of the page, layering them on top of her abstract marks either linearly, appearing as complete sentences, or sporadically in what seems to be a randomized order with soft washes of watercolour seeping through the background and lines interrupting the text. The visuals, like in all of Adnan's leporellos, are not mere illustrations of script but equivalents of one another; the Iraqi poet's written words mirror Adnan's drawings and visual marks dispersed across the leporello pages. Together, the words, lines, and hand drawings form a new entity - an abstract visualization of script and image.

Consistent with Adnan's other leporello works, the covers of this folding book remain in their original form. Its manufacturer in Japan most likely installed the Japanese fabric, which wraps the two ends of the accordion-style book. Like in most of Adnan's leporellos, she leaves the covers of this work untouched, with the exception of adding a label with an inscription of the work's title.