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Author: Hiwot Abebe - January 12, 2019 Modern Art Museum Gebre Kristos Desta Center opened a new exhibition exploring major art works in Ethiopian modern art scene. Art works that stood out during the past year and other pieces of art that have not been seen in several years were brought together for this exhibition. The show opened January 5th to the public as part of the Addis 2019 African Humanities Initiative Workshop. The exhibition consists of several works by different

Author: Hiwot Abebe - January 19, 2019 Bold Space is about attention. The human figures take a moment out of their daily hustle and pose in front of buses or taxi queues. They gaze earnestly at the viewer, their absolute stillness holding our attention. The buses and cargo containers present in Leykun Wondifraw’s paintings are also still – snapshots of the means of transport frozen in time. Depicting absolutely mundane, everyday occurrences Leykun’s works demand attention. Th

Author: Hiwot Abebe - December 15, 2018 Sebastian Cailleux, French photographer and traveller has launched an exhibition at Alliance Ethio-Française the Ecoled’Art Au Village (EDAAV) exhibition. Cailleux is founder and president of EDAVV, an NGO that works on education and culture in 23 countries around the globe. The exhibition is part of a children’s art workshop with EDAAV with kids ages 3 to 15 on the theme of ‘Addis’s Skyline’ and will be led by LeikunNahusenay. Cailleux

Author: Hiwot Abebe - December 8, 2018 The fifth edition of Addis Foto Fest kicked off on Thursday at the Sheraton Hotel. The biennial festival has been a staple of East African photography for the last decade, showcasing the works of new and emerging artists from the continent and across the world. Organized by Desta for Africa (DFA) Creative Consulting and the Embassy of Switzerland in Ethiopia, AFF’s reach in Ethiopia and the region has expanded this year. Photographers fr

Author: Hiwot Abebe - November 24, 2018 Mulugeta Tafesse is a visual artist, art critic and theoretician. He is also the author of the book ‘Towards African Mimesis: Regarding East Africa’s Art Scene Now’. Mulugata graduated from Ale School of Fine Art and Design in 1980, obtained his masters at Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, a postgraduate degree from the National Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp (Be.), and then his PhD from La Laguna University

Author: Hiwot Abebe - October 27, 2018 A group consisting of 5 artists, 3 researchers and 2 curators set out on a journey through Shoa following the trails of European explorers of the 19th century. Their travels through Menagesha forest, Holeta, Addis Alem, Entoto and the historic town of Ankober led to an exhibition at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the Addis Ababa University, on Thursday. The research and expedition was a joint project by the Goethe-Institute and Al

Author: Hiwot Abebe - September 29, 2018 In the final chapter of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a celebrated literary work published in the 1972, which is presented as a sequence of imaginary dialogue between a Venetian traveler Marco Polo and the Tartar emperor Kublai Khan, the narrator Marco Polo describes the city of Berenice to the great Kublai Khan as product of two opposing yet integral aspects of a city. On the surface, the visible Berenice, unjust and cruel to resi

Author: Hiwot Abebe - August 4, 2018 The Alle School of Fine Art annual graduate art show opened on Thursday at the school’s gallery to a large audience. Director of the school Agegnehu Adane and associate professor Bekele Mekonnen opened the exhibition to artists, art lovers and the families of the graduates. The exhibition showcased the works of undergraduate and postgraduate students’ final projects. The school’s students presented installations, paintings, fashion design

Author: Hiwot Abebe - June 30, 2018 Artistic rendition of political turmoil in Ethiopia Behailu Bezabih’s centerpiece, in his solo exhibition the Phoenix on displayed at Gebre Kristos Desta Center, is a large installation of burnt tire and coils of wire along with giant 3 to 5-feet long pencils carefully arranged on top of the pile and along the wall. The largest piece of the exhibition, its significance is not immediately apparent to those that had neglected to read the text

Author: Hiwot Abebe - June 2, 2018 Wirshato’ – A Pot Smashing Performance, a performance piece by acclaimed artist Tibebe Terffa, took place this Thursday at the Goethe Institute. The performance was first presented in 1995 at the Goethe Institute. The repeated performance consisted of Tibebe inviting attendees of the event to smash jebenas, declaring, “we must break to refashion and create new form … The outside of this pot is so black and burnt that we must break it to see

Author: Hiwot Abebe - May 26, 2018 Leikun Nahusenay’s White Line opened this week at Alliance Ethio-Française to a very large turnout. His first solo show following his retrospective at Addis Fine Art in 2016, White Line features 43 works completed within the past 2 years. This exhibition included collages, photographs and installations following Leikun’s experimental technique peeling photos. Highly informed by his training in wood cut graphics at Ale School of Fine Art, Lei

Author: Hiwot Abebe - April 28, 2018 The emergence of Contemporary Nights and Indie Film Screening, unique art venues in Addis, are designed for a niche audience who are tired of the ordinary art scene; and looking for something fresh. Contemporary Nights hosts diverse art disciplines and it is premised on the belief that art making isn’t necessarily an individual endeavor while the Screening is all about nurturing culture criticism. Artists get the opportunity to see other a

Author Hiwot Abebe The second chapter of Modern Art Museum: Gebre Kristos Desta Center’s “Min Neber?” featured Robel Temesgen’s Adbar, a study of physical spaces that embody spirits and their interaction with believers and inhabitants of the area. The first chapter showed the talismanic works of Henok Melkamzer, paintings that explore the ancient and controversial craft of Telsem. Director of the Modern Art Museum Elizabeth WoldeGiorgis (PhD) curated this two-fold exhibition

Author Dagim Abebe Image by author. “The archive is not a neutral box of documents but a system of power, a form of knowledge, and a...