Ermias Ekube: Altering Memories

About

Altering Memories brings together works from Ekube’s career spanning multiple decades and geographical displacements from Addis Ababa to Asmara, Nairobi and Sweden, where he currently lives and works. Ekube has consistently found community and creative outlet, re-establishing his art practice in each location. This exhibition features works salvaged by Ekube’s artist friends in Addis Ababa, lithographs and paintings from his time in Asmara from private collections, and recent works produced in Sweden, courtesy of Ed Cross Fine Arts. A documentary film on the artist produced by Almas Art Foundation will also be on view throughout the exhibition.

Born in 1970 in Addis Ababa, Ermias Ekube studied at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, a pioneering institution of modern art education in Ethiopia, founded in 1958. From initial experimentations with modernism and poetry to later works highlighting the immigrants’ plight, Ekube’s works have evolved to explore identity, memory, and the humanness that lies in revising memories through the process of recollection. Portraiture has remained a constant fascination for reflecting on the self and the society. Juxtaposing the immediate perceived truth in traditional figurative painting with texts, symbolic objects, and mirrors that inaccurately reflect the flotsam of daily life, Ekube has charged his works with increasing conceptual tension about time and reality throughout his career.