INSPIREDWOMEN

had a sister of equal talent, her skills would die unacknowledged and unexpressed as a result of her gender and its attendant societal constraints. Woolf writes:

“Meanwhile [Shakespeare’s] extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imagina-tive, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers…

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or moped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to.”

Transplanting Woolf’s claim into the present, is the same true for women artists operating in current-day Ethiopia? Instead of a playwright, in this instance, Shakespeare’s sister could be an artist, perhaps a painter or a photographer. Do the same societal constrains apply to women in a different time and place? Are the circumstances faced by women artists inherently different from those faced by men?

These questions flitted through my mind as I attended the closing ceremony of the Ethiopian Contemporary Art Gallery’s (ECAG) latest art exhibition at the Radisson Blu, organized by Zeriun Sey-oumand Nuru Abegaz. The show featured over thirty women art-ists, the vast majority of whom are based in Ethiopia, and was appropriately titled “Inspired Women.”

When I first saw all the paintings and photographs side-by-side weeks earlier in the ECAG space in the Laphto Center in Old Air-port, I didn’t find it odd that there would be an exhibition of only women artists. Instead, I strolled around and familiarized myself with the art on display. I lingered over Marta Mengstu’s “Coffee

very woman needs an income and a room of her own in order to create. That is Virginia Woolf’s argument in her essay, “A Room of One’s Own.” Woolf, a lead-ing 20th century female novelist, essayist, and feminist postulates that if Shakespeare

by Rebecca Emiru

Ceremony” whose graceful blue ladies seem at once alien and hu-man, their improbably long arms and serene faces simultaneously peculiar and commonplace.

But on the night of the closing, all I could think was, “Why? Why did the organizers decide to only feature women artists? Does this imply something special about the way women artists are treated? Is their art inherently different? Different from whom? Are there any all-male exhibitions? How come the organizers of this event are both men?”

According to Zerihun, he and Nuru wanted to make this group exhibition different from ones they had seen in the past. As active artists, both Zerihun and Nuru have a wide, pre-existing network of former fellow students, colleagues and friends who are women.

The feeling that these talented members of the art community did not receive the amount of exposure they deserved gave birth to “Inspired Women.”

Zerihun also added that the vision of ECAG was to support and complement artists in this country. While there is a role for cul-tural institutions and NGOs in promoting and cultivating art, he insisted that there also ought to be significant participation from homegrown collectives and organizations as well.

The position of the organizers of this exhibit as friends, colleagues, contemporaries, and equals of the artists on display mitigated my initial suspicion as to why men would curate an all-female exhibi-tion. I learned that this was not an arbitrary project but the fruit of observations of and interactions with women artists.

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The Ethiopian Contemporary Art Gallery in the Laphto Center.

The ArtistsNo one is better suited to discuss what it means and feels to be a woman and an artist in Ethiopia today than the women artists themselves. I spoke to four. Here is what they had to say:

Desta HagosInternationally known and popularly acclaimed Ethiopian fine art-ist Desta Hagos, who studied under Gebre-Kristos Desta is cel-ebrated and respected not only for her talent but for being a pio-neer in a field once reserved as male domain. She has participated in over forty-seven shows throughout the world and has a well-deserved reputation as a gifted artist. When I asked her how she became a professional artist, she told me that she never struggled with the decision. “I always knew I wanted to become an artist. When I was a young girl in school, one of my works was submit-ted to an international competition and I won, so I knew from early on.” She recalled how so very few other women were admitted to art school in her day and how even fewer made it to graduation. In contrast, she looks around the room, surrounded by the works of fellow female artists and tells me, “Things are different now.” To aspiring young women artist, she says, “Be true. Be true to your-self and your art always. Never give up in your pursuit, even if you are discouraged. Don’t give up.”

Elsabeth HabtewoldElsabeth produced a multi-media presentation for this exhibi-tion. It is an 80 second looped video composed of multiple layers and animation. The top-most layer consists of a continuous white line that assembles itself in a complicated pattern. As the line as-sembles, parts of it become grey; they break off and float off the screen. The video, aptly titled “Regeneration,” demonstrates the

intertwined cycles of life and death. Elsabeth says she was initially bothered by a disturbing article about the trend of sniffingglue, and that this idea later developed into “Regeneration.” When I asked her what she thought of women’s place in the art community in Ethiopia, she said, “In numbers, the women are fewer, but in talent they are equal to men.”

Konjit SeyoumKonjit Seyoum is an artist, curator, conference interpreter and owner of ASNI Gallery, which she founded in 1996. A self-taught artist, she is presently working with photo-based media. For this exhibition, she created “YehewanNeger”, which can be translate-das “Eve’s Affairs.” It is composed of a series of photographs that started with an actual drawing and evolved into fragments of im-ages exploring issues of gender, identity, desire and mystification. “I thought it would relate well to the theme of the exhibition as well as to the venue where it was displayed, the Laphto Center, because it has retail shops on the lower floors,” says Konjit.

When asked about participating in a show that only exhibited women, she replied that had she not known the organizers so well, and if the organizing entity had been different, she would have hesitated to take part. As it is, she has a very high regard to Zerihun and Nuru. “Usually, if it’s an outside entity that is organizing an all women show, they mean to display all female, African art.” It is this spectacle that she believes the ECAG has avoided so artfully.

Roshan LinsiRoshan appreciated the opportunity to meet so many fellow artists at the show. “The good thing is that you get to see as an artists, a lot of other artists whose works you’ve never seen before, or you’ve

never met before. I didn’t expect it to be like this, quite frank-ly. So many women artists in Addis came out to display their work.” Reflecting on the past four years, Roshan remembers that there are not many female artists who exhibit on a regular basis. Asked why, she responds, “I think maybe one of the rea-sons is they are submitted to different pressures…raising chil-dren, or providing an income if it’s a double-income family, or if you come from a more traditional family. But even if you’re not in a traditional family, you often have to participate. A man does not. I know a lot of men artists who live at home and get catered to; they don’t have to participate, so they can pursue and develop their art. But for women artists to live with their family and want to do that is absolutely out of the question. It’s also more discouraging for women to try to be artists living off their art. It is much more difficult than for male artists, which is difficult enough as it is.”

We then discussed what was different about the classification of women artists as separate from the greater community. “You know, I normally don’t like the classification of female artists or female art. It’s like what they used to do with the African art or Primitive art. It’s a classification, which usually implies that there is fine art and then the sub-category. And there is always a little bit of flavor as if those who are put in that category are not going to be measured or judged by the same standard, and that’s an aspect I don’t usually appreciate or like. But I think in the context of this exhibition, it’s a bit different because the idea was not just to say, ‘Yeah, let’s show what women can do.’ but the idea was more like, ‘There are a lot of women here, let them come together and interact, and maybe find a way to encourage each other’s growth.”

I left the Radisson with a lot to think about that night, but one thing I knew for sure was that Shakespeare’s sister does not live in Ethiopia today. Yes, there are certainly considerable difficul-ties that women artist face here, but there is also a growing, supportive community of artists and art-lovers, both male and female. Yesterday’s trailblazers paved the way for the creators of today and tomorrow.