interior design
Dereje Shiferaw
Born in 1976. Dereje Shiferaw’s current body of work utilizes bold and deliberate strokes made with oil pastel, acrylic paint and water color. His mixed media techniques on paper and canvas evoke a multidimensional world of composition depicted in contested environments.
Shiferaw’s approach to portraying Black subjects and subjectivities center on an unapologetic emboldening of facial features that maximize the adornment and celebration of subaltern black bodies. His style challenges formal approaches to the medium, enabling a politicized personal subjectivity to emit from the faces and facial features he depicts. For years, Shiferaw has pondered philosophies of togetherness. One plus one is not exclusively two as per the titular equation. A sum could be infinitely more than a singular sum of disparate parts. He contextualizes his work in this wonder and the suggestion that there is truth to be found in what remains unrevealed. Shiferaw improvises black line work in dialogue with his extensive use of black. Organic forms emerge from a sense of calculated abandon. This improvisation connects his philosophical pondering of the unrevealed with his visual arts practice and technique. Shiferaw has exhibited work in Ethiopia and abroad. In 2022 his solo show was presented at Christine X Art Gallery in Sliema, Malta. His work has exhibited in group shows, most recently at SPAZJU KREATTIV in 2023 for a retrospective on contemporary African Art in Valletta, Malta and in the past at Gravit Art Gallery in Nairobi, Kenya. Shiferaw currently lives and works with his wife and children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Prince Merid Tafesse
Born in Ethiopia in 1974, is dubbed the King of Charcoal for his masterful use of the medium which Modern Museum of Art (MOMA) has archived several of his charcoal on paper works, deposited by curator Meskerem Assegued. A 1998 graduate of Addis Ababa University Alle School of Fine Art; Design where he specialized in painting, his photographic memory facilitates the creation of profound portraits, figures -spaces and places. His talent is an affront to stereotypical notions of art from Africa, surpassing boundaries with his unique visual voice. Inspired by his heritage and his mother, a self-taught artist and 5 th generation descendant of the Imperial Ethiopian Family, he is also influenced by the works of H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie I; Bob Marley’s music and Kahlil Gibran and Oscar Wilde’s prose. He ha had exhibitions, residencies in Jerusalem; Paris; Johannesburg; Dubai; NYC and Miami Wynwood Art District during Art Basel, 2011 and University of Florida Harn Museum to name a few. Commissions include Coca Cola, Addis Abeba; Red Terror Martyr’s Museum and Embassies of Portugal and France, amongst others, with collections in Dr. Rita Marley/Bob; Rita Marley Foundations, Embassies of Denmark and the USA, National Museum of Ethiopia and UN Office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights. His creative epicenter is called Moa Anbessa Fine Art Studio Gallery in the heart of Addis Abeba – diplomatic capital of Africa.
PRINCE MERID TAFESSE
Prince Merid Tafesse Damtew was born in Ethiopia Megabit 20, 1966, Ethiopian Calendar E.C)/March 29, 1974 Gregorian Calendar (G.C). Raised in Addis Ababa by father
Zerihun Yetmgeta
Magic scroll paintings based on weaver’s tools and strips of parchment framed on pieces of wood is artist Zerihun Yetmgeta’s established trademark. His work combines modern art interwoven with traditional motifs that creates a cosmopolitan work of art. Owing to Yetmgeta’s extraordinary choice of mixed media with modern painting trends, he has been recognized in numerous art books, national megazines, newspapers and publications.
Born 1941, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Yetmgeta attended boarding school where he acquired the nickname “scientist” because he enjoyed working with his hands. He attended the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa and has taught at the school since 1978. When he opened his first one-man show to the public it consisted of a mixture of canvas, skin and wood, and it was such a success that half of his art works were sold at the exhibition itself.
To date, Yetmgeta has received international success and is recognized as a contemporary creative genius. He has received awards to include 1st Prize, All Ethiopian School, Addis Ababa, 1958 Represented Ethiopia in the 4th Havana Biennial in 1991, themed The Challenge of Colonization Awarded the prestigious Prix de la Biennale at Dak’ Art 1992, and 2nd prize at the Kenyan Art Panorama, French Cultural Center, Nairobi, 1994.
Yetmgeta’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally and he has works in a number of European and American museum collections, as well as in many private collections.
Yared Olivelli
Yared Olivelli was brn in 1985. He graduated from the Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design in Graphics Art in 2010.
Since 2010, he has been working as an instructor at the School of Fine Arts and Design of Addis Ababa University. Yared’s works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Addis Ababa and other countries.
These include:
2004 Red Cross Hall Dessie
2005 Adama
2007 Makush Art Gallery- Addis Ababa
2008 Lalibela Exhibition Center
2008 “Listro” School of Fine Arts Gallery with international artists in Addis Ababa and Germany
2009 at US Embassy Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Tibebe Terffa
He was born in the walled city of Harar, Ethiopia in 1948. He studied at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Art from where he graduating painting in 1973. During the school years (1970-1973), Tibebe and his friends formed the sixteen Young Artist’s Association that aimed at staging exhibitions around the country. Tibebe worked as an art instructor at the Medhanealem Comprehensive School Harar from 1973 until 1980. In 1981 he moved to Addis Ababa, and worked as an illustrator for Kuraz Publishing House until 1983. Since 1984 he has been working as a studio artist from his residence in Addis Ababa. Since 1981 he has numerous solo exhibition in Ethiopia, Germany (Berlin), Canada (Winnipeg, Toronto), USA (Washington), Spain (Madrid).