TESFAYE URGESSA
PREJUDICE AND BELONGING
CURATED BY LEMN SISSAY
at the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia
20th April - 24th November 2024
Tesfaye Urgessa
Tesfaye Urgessa was born in 1983 and lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Urges-sa studied under modern master Tadesse Mesfin in Ethiopia, and later graduated from the Staatlichen Akademie in Stuttgart. Through these experiences, Urgessa was able to connect Ethiopian iconography and a deep fascination with traditional figurative paint-ing to create a unique and striking language. His classical figurations with their writh-ing bodies create distorted psychological tension hidden in domestic settings. Urgessa’s subject matter recalls intertwined representations of race and the politics of identity. Selected exhibitions include Oltre/Beyond at Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy (2018); The Stand-Ins: Figurative Painting from the Collection, Zabludowicz Collection, London, England (2021); The New African Portraiture, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems, Austria (2022); Tesfaye Urgessa, Rubell Museum Miami, Miami, United States of America (2022); Tense Conditions: A Presentation of Contemporary African Art, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany. Urgessa's work is held in the permanent collections of, Zabludowicz Collection, London, England; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy; Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart, Germany; Rubell Museum, Miami, United States of America; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; The Museum of African Contem-porary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech, Morocco.
Lemn Sissay
Lemn Sissay is a poet, author, and broadcaster. He is the first Chancellor of Ethiopian Heritage in the United Kingdom and served at The University of Manchester from 2015 to 2022. In the mode of Concrete Poetry, his public art work began with Hardy’s Well in Manchester in the mid 1990’s. Over time, Hardy’s Well became a beloved landmark of the city. From Manchester, his Landmarks spread across the country, to London and to Addis Ababa. In 1996 his poem Gilt of Cain, wrapped upon a sculpture by Michael Vissochi, was unveiled in the city of London by Bishop Desmond Tutu, while Lemn’s installation poem on climate change ‘What If?’ exhibited at The Royal Academy. Sissay’s fascination with words in public spaces lead to Poet Slash Artist, which he curated in 2021 with Hans Ulrich Obrist. The exhibition included ‘artists slash poets’ including Etel Adnan Friederike Mayröcker, Heather Phillipson, Gozo Yoshimasu, Tracy Emin, to name but a few, and featured a collaboration between Sissay and Xu Bing. In 2023, Sissay’s first neon work exhibited at The Chanel Metiers D’Art exhibition Manchester Modern Manchester Modern. He is the Sunday Times best-selling author of My Name is Why (Canongate, 2019) and Let the Light Pour In (Canongate, 2023). Google “Lemn Sissay” and all the return hits will be about him.
The Pavilion
Translating the Heart
Tesfaye Urgessa collects ‘things’ and places them in a conceptual ‘basement’, tiny images, large ideas, a hand, a torso, turned feet, a song. It is an eternal space of precious objects and ideas. “The basement is where you keep what is important to you”. The artist is in his studio in Addis Ababa. He is encouraged by the focus of Lucien Freud and the “natural way and attitude to working” of Philip Guston.
In Prejudice and Belonging Tesfaye Urgessa paints a number of canvases at the same time say five or ten. “I look at my paintings and then kind of imagine in which painting this particular certain image might work, so I try on one canvas, sometimes it works and I continue and sometimes it doesn’t work and I have to destroy it.” He moves around the studio from one canvas to the other seeking ‘the chemical reaction’ to initiate a ‘chain reaction’.
Between eleven and seventeen Tesfaye avidly, devotedly, copied church paintings. In Ethiopia religious iconography is often the first connection to art. With encouragement from his family Tesfaye attended The Ale School of Art and Design at Addis Ababa University. Many of the teachers studied in Russia and taught Russian realism, anatomy, colour, composition.
From Ethiopian iconography to Russian realism Urgessa graduated on a scholarship to continue art studies at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart under Professor Cordula Güdemann. Upon graduating in 2014 he was awarded the Akademie’s Fine Arts Prize. Although he was making his name across the nation, Urgessa was still coming to terms with being a professional painter “For me the most important thing was to draw as well as possible but being an ‘artist’ or to be called an artist was very abstract to me.”
Prejudice and Belonging arises from a particular experience over the thirteen years spent in Germany, helping with translation in immigration camps, hearing stories of being an immigrant. He stops speaking for a moment “People tend to think I am painting victims in my canvases but it’s completely different. The figures hold all kinds of emotions, fragility as well as confidence. It is the figure presenting without any judgement. It is saying this is who I am, this is what I am.”
In Prejudice and Belonging Urgessa is ‘not following natural laws’ but the laws of painting. Tesfaye Urgessa’s figures are not defined by their scars but by the incredible ability to heal.
Lemn Sissay, OBE, FRSL