The painter Tesfaye Urgessa will represent Ethiopia for the country’s first-ever national pavilion at this year’s 60th Venice Biennale, which runs from April 20 until November 24, 2024. His exhibition “Prejudice and Belonging” will take place at Palazzo Bolani and is curated by the writer Lemn Sissay. It was commissioned by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Tourism.
Urgessa’s work stands out for its focus on classicized human figures, often distorted or entwined with each other in domestic settings. The viewer is invited to contemplate the subjects’ ambiguous psychological states.
Born in Addis Ababa in 1983, Urgessa began his studies under the celebrated painter Tadesse Mesfin at the Ale School of Art and Design at Addis Ababa University. He later moved to Stuttgart in Germany to study at the Staatlichen Akademie and remained in the country for 13 years. During this period, Urgessa developed a style that used Ethiopian iconography as well as influences from the German Neo-Expressionists and School of London painters like Freud, Auerbach, and Bacon.
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