The act of remembering is the act of feeling. This nomadic type of exploration that merges three types of archives seeks to address the concept of an involuntary memory, on...
The act of remembering is the act of feeling. This nomadic type of exploration that merges three types of archives seeks to address the concept of an involuntary memory, on that’s of emotions and senses.
As a child, I grew up reading the history of Ethiopia in various books that my father left before his passing. I red about the glorious periods in Ethiopian history and lived in a society that celebrated it. Even though ethnic tensions currently dominated the intellectual landscape, we continue to take pride in being an African nation with 3000 years of history that successfully defended itself from colonization. For many Ethiopians, remembering is in our cultural DNA, be it in politics, art or conflict form. We stand at an intersection between a yearning for the past and a longing for the future with profound uncertainty.
Images play an important role in this remembrance. Ethiopia’s visual representation starts in the 19th century with engravings, sketches and photographs made by European ‘travelers’. I use these archives together with images that I took from my family album and my own current photographic works. Superimposing of these materials acts as a metaphor for the overlapping and compression of time and space in one’s memory. On one hand, it is an acknowledgment of the continuous involvement of the western world in our history. Even our own historians favoured European accounts in writing our stories and therefore, shaping our future. On the other, it speaks to the abundant nostalgia for the seemingly glorious past.
I recently made my first visit to the birthplace of my grandparents whom I didn’t get the chance to know well. Standing on the top of a mountain helplessly gazing at the horizon, I remember slowly feeling a sudden connectedness to the soil beneath my feet and a beautiful but harsh landscape in front of my eyes. It was a fleet of memories, shifting from an initial longing for the presence of my ancestors to then a quick rush of melancholy for an uncertain future that awaits my generation and the generation of Ethiopians. Landscape is part of our heritage and it played an important role in our making. It’s a reflection of a complex relationship between political, social and economical contexts shaping the history and memory of the people. Battles, trade routes and European routes of contact were all part of circumstances that are the result of both natural and cultural landscapes in Ethiopia.
Therefore, my identity as an Ethiopian maintains an amorphous shape constantly shifting between elements of personal and collective memories. Identity photographs I took from my family album are superimposed on archival portraits of both Ethiopian monarchical rulers and every day people from the past. The superimposition brings forward somewhat of a new being removed further from the original, speaking to not only the fluidity of memory but to the fluidity of identity in the present day as well.
The audience is encouraged to look at the images slowly, as if they navigate between the past and the future, hence staying a nomad in a dreamlike state, between yesterday and tomorrow.