TY - CHAP
T1 - A postcard from Addis
T2 - Ethiopian modernism(s) in the world
AU - Cowcher, K.
N1 - Funding: Research for this essay was facilitated by the 2017–2018 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge.
PY - 2021/3/25
Y1 - 2021/3/25
N2 - This chapter explores Ethiopia’s internationalist positioning in the 1960s and the role of art within it through the divergent worldly engagements of Afewerk Tekle and Skunder Boghossian by pursuing what Karima Laachir, Sara Marzagora and Francesca Orsini call “significant geographies". It contributes to histories of modern art in Africa that increasingly address transnational engagements, whilst also being attentive to the aspiration that Ethiopian artists’ global presence amplified their nation as a new center. The 1967 Congress of the Ethiopian Students Association in North America went as far as to state that “oppression, poverty, disease, illiteracy, feudalism and imperialism cannot be eradicated from Ethiopia without a total liquidation of the existing system.” In the year of Bier’s visit, therefore, Ethiopia’s three leading modern artists, Afewerk, Skunder and Gebre Kristos, were all in Addis, digesting their various overseas experiences and pursuing distinctly different modernist projects.
AB - This chapter explores Ethiopia’s internationalist positioning in the 1960s and the role of art within it through the divergent worldly engagements of Afewerk Tekle and Skunder Boghossian by pursuing what Karima Laachir, Sara Marzagora and Francesca Orsini call “significant geographies". It contributes to histories of modern art in Africa that increasingly address transnational engagements, whilst also being attentive to the aspiration that Ethiopian artists’ global presence amplified their nation as a new center. The 1967 Congress of the Ethiopian Students Association in North America went as far as to state that “oppression, poverty, disease, illiteracy, feudalism and imperialism cannot be eradicated from Ethiopia without a total liquidation of the existing system.” In the year of Bier’s visit, therefore, Ethiopia’s three leading modern artists, Afewerk, Skunder and Gebre Kristos, were all in Addis, digesting their various overseas experiences and pursuing distinctly different modernist projects.
UR - https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367140854
UR - https://discover.libraryhub.jisc.ac.uk/search?isn=9780367140847&rn=1
U2 - 10.4324/9780367140854-14
DO - 10.4324/9780367140854-14
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9780367140847
SN - 9780367721541
T3 - Studies in art historiography
SP - 149
EP - 163
BT - New histories of art in the global postwar era
A2 - Frigeri, Flavia
A2 - Handberg, Kristian
PB - Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon, Oxon
ER -