“I was thinking about being a foreigner. I was thinking about what it means to belong.”
Tesfaye Urgessa made history as the first artist to represent Ethiopia at the Venice Biennale in 2024.
His participation came at a time when the Biennale’s theme, Foreigners Everywhere, resonated deeply with the themes explored in Urgessa’s large figurative paintings and his personal experiences. As an artist who has navigated the complexities of identity, race, and the immigrant experience, Tesfaye Urgessa’s work engages with the emotional realities of displacement and cultural intersections.
Tesfaye Urgessa started his artistic journey in Ethiopia, where he would copy paintings from the church: “In Ethiopia, in the church, you see very bright, very strong paintings, and those are the kind of art I used to know at that time. I was copying them, and I taught myself how to draw and how to paint.” However, it wasn’t until Tesfaye Urgessa moved to Germany and enrolled in the Staatliche Akademie in Stuttgart that he decided to turn his talent for drawing into an artistic career.
In this interview, Tesfaye Urgessa reflects on different experiences of being a foreigner, his own painting process, as well as the importance of Ethiopia being represented at the Venice Biennale:
“Even though we have very talented artists as a community, we kind of suffered because, you know, if you don’t have the exposure, you don’t have the market, and if you don’t have the market, if you don’t have the school, you know, everything suffers. So I physically went to the tourism minister and said, like, you know, we need to participate in this Venice Biennale because it brings so much attention, so much positive attention to the country as well as to the artist community.”
Tesfaye Urgessa (b. 1983, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a contemporary painter whose work explores themes of identity, belonging, and the immigrant experience. Trained at the Addis Ababa University Alle School of Fine Art and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, Urgessa’s figurative paintings are known for their expressive, distorted forms depicting issues of race, identity, and social criticism. In 2024, Urgessa became the first artist to represent Ethiopia at the Venice Biennale, exhibiting under the theme Prejudice and Belonging. His work is held in the collections of institutions such as Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy; Zabludowicz Collection, London, England; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart, Germany; Rubell Museum, Miami, United States of America; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; and The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech, Morocco.
Tesfaye Urgessa was interviewed by Nanna Rebekka at the Ethiopian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in April 2024.
Produced and edited by Nanna Rebekka.
Cinematographer: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan.
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024
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