To Represent Ethiopia At Venice Biennale.
Artist Tesfaye Urgessa has been selected to represent Ethiopia at the 2024 Venice Biennale, the first time that Ethiopia will be participating with a national pavilion at the event. The 60th International Art Exhibition will take place from Saturday 20 April to Sunday 24 November, 2024 at the 13th-century Palazzo Bolani. In recent years, Tesfaye has gained international recognition including presenting, “Tesfaye Urgessa in Miami” with Saatchi Yates in 2022 for Miami Art Week, and “No Country for Young Men” in 2019 for Addis Fine Art in Addis Ababa, among others.
The Venice exhibition will adopt the theme, “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere”. Other nations such as Benin, Egypt, France,
Great Britain, Nigeria, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, and Tanzania have already announced their intention to showcase African and diasporic perspectives.
Born in 1983, Tesfaye Urgessa is known for his paintings that depict human bodies in the center of domestic scenes. His subjects, often stoic and muscular, staring the viewer directly in the eye, are exposed and vulnerable. Balancing gestural form with a sharp color palette, his paintings reflect his personal experience with racism once he moved from Ethiopia to Germany.
The selection of Tesfaye to represent Ethiopia at the Venice Biennale is a significant stride for Ethiopia in the global art scene. After earning his degree from the Ale School of Fine Art and Design in Addis Ababa in 2002, Tesfaye took his talents to Germany in 2009, where he enrolled in the Master’s program at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. Later, he returned home and currently lives and works in Addis Ababa.
Sources: www.artsy.net/ and www.artnewsafrica.com/