Contemporary

About

Agata Nowak is one of the artists showing at Contemporary at the Boomer Gallery.

The most recent work of Agata entitled Axum November 2020 (2021) commemorates hundreds of innocent civilians killed in Ethiopia.

“The evidence is compelling and points to a chilling conclusion. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops carried out multiple war crimes in their offensive to take control of Axum. Above and beyond that, Eritrean troops went on a rampage and systematically killed hundreds of civilians in cold blood, which appears to constitute crimes against humanity,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International's Director for East and Southern Africa.

The figures of mothers, young children and young adults are made in black groggy clay. They stand together, as if interacting and supporting each other in procession around Church of our Lady Mary of Zion.

The figures have long necks, small heads, bodies as if dressed in long tunics with suggestion of movement. The clay has an earthy, rough quality. The figures are unglazed, there is no decoration apart from slightly detectable finger marks left by when pressing the clay. Stoneware. The figures range from 10cm to 32cm high.