Huguette Caland: imagine/otherwise

“The madness that spun me into Huguette Caland’s art the first time around felt as if falling off a rollercoaster headfirst into a mountain of frosting. Surrendering to the sumptuous curve of pink hues, they gradually began to tessellate forming an orbit, a tender crossing of blue.” Lebanese-born artist, Huguette Caland (1931–2019) was a path-breaking figure in late modernism. The only daughter of the first Lebanese president, Bechara El Khoury, she produced a singular body of art that spanned media and continents. Working for more than five decades, her art is recognized for its embodied aesthetic and its unique sensuality. In this searching critical biography, author and curator, Omar Kholeif, disentangles the seeming madness, velocity, and the interiority of Caland’s life. Both an epistolary memoir and a biography, Kholeif, interleaves the affective experience of encountering the artist over a period of 18 years, as readers are summoned on a journey through clouds of bristling color. Here, Caland’s fields of light are set to lyric prose and poetry, fashioning a scene for looking at and experiencing the erotics of art anew.