“In a Fibonacci sequence, each sum builds upon the previous equation. Etel Adnan’s work reminds me of a Fibonacci in this particular way. I am drawn to the ways in which her poems, paintings, tapestries, and leporellos make evident a lineage, thread, and lifelong excavation of what mattered most to Adnan. I wrote ‘Shorn, treaded, red’ after visiting some of Adnan’s paintings last winter. This poem is meant to speak to the luster and circular logic I saw in Adnan’s ‘Satellites 27’ but also, given the moment in which it was written, it is an opening to something more elegiac.”
—Asiya Wadud