My Ethiopia Recent Paintings by Wosene Worke Kosrof My Ethiopia is the title of an ongoing exhibition of recent paintings by Wosene Worke Kosrof, jointly organized by The Newark Museum and the Neuberger Museum of Art, which opened September 2003. The exhibition includes a total of 14 acrylic paintings (on canvases and linen) painted between 2000 and 2003. It is scheduled to be shown in several other museums throughout the United States until 2005. Wosene is the first Ethiopian, or African modernist artist, who is acknowledged and awarded this privilege by American Museums-- the first of its kind. My Ethiopia is also the title of a painting by Wosene painted in 2001. My Ethiopia which is not included in this exhibition, was first exhibited in 2001 at the Bomani Gallery, San Francisco during “The Color of Words” series show, and most recently, “Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora”, 2003 at the National Museum of African Art, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. As with My Ethiopia, the selected paintings for this particular exhibition are lavishly illuminated venerations of Ethiopia. They are integrated with poetic, thought-provoking script and decorations, expressing many of the same interests of Wosene. The Ethiopic script/Ethiopian alphabet played a major role as an aesthetic language, a picture and a useful means of communicating ideas. During the first half of the 20th century, the western world educated early African Modernists successfully revive African aesthetics. Since that time, in the more pressing cultural concerns of early African Modernists, Wosene’s generation of African artists has managed to imprint their own artistic style. Their approaches perplex scholars and entice them to wonder and speculate about the many possible sources and expressions of these artists. In the context of twenty-century Ethiopian art, heroism and patriotism have not gone out of fashion. It is provided in every form and nuance. Poets, authors, composers, and even film directors and photographers have created their masterpieces based on Ethiopia. The sources of their ethos and creativity, as well as the forms of their expressions, are driven from the country’s history or art. It is not an exaggeration to label some of the artists as patriotic. Wosene, who is constantly fascinated and challenged by Ethiopia, believes that there is more of Ethiopia’s beauty that he can unearth. He draws from his tradition the moral advantages needed to regain his due position in the modern art world and he constantly attempts to create a spiritual and physical connection of the past and present. To this end, he nourishes himself with ancient and contemporary history, folk tales, traditions and more than anything else, the art of Ethiopic writing system. He deliberately applied Ethiopic as a search for cultural identity; a will to assure and restore the continuity of the past. In the process, the danger regarding alphabetic mimesis is creatively and systematically avoided. The works reflect his individual and personal solutions to an artistic problem. His characteristic features, including integration of decoration, script, and motifs, become vividly progressive and spontaneous. After he finished his studies at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, and after wrestling with the central problem of painting, Wosene became the first artist who made Ethiopic script a picture, and at the same time, established it to express himself creatively. Since then, he has created paintings filled with nobility, celebration and devotion to Ethiopian alphabet. By the early1980s, Wosene had formulated a style from Ethiopic script and, in the end, established a definitive artistic identity of his own. Wosene is one of the few innovative artists of his generation to achieve national and international prominence. At the age 54, he is one of the most admired and respected African modern artists living in the United States of America. The tradition of including words, phrases and sentences in work of art has existed since African/Ethiopian manuscripts began. Later, it was widely used by religious and folk painters to describe the subject matter, or personality depicted. When access to preserved ancient texts and printed materials of church paintings, as well as manuscripts and talismanic art, became widely available, formally trained modern Ethiopian artists became fascinated by the Geez scripts and handwriting used in manuscripts and talismanic art (its mythic force and direct power of relating information). Ethiopian calligraphy became a visual poetry that desired not only new codes of communication, but also new channels of diffusion. In Wosene’s work, Amharic words (and sometimes phrases) that contained implicit and explicit messages - clean and vulgar were added as decorative motifs. His recent work is a praise and celebration of Ethiopia. As with his earlier works, Glory II, 1999 and Glory III, 2000, it dealt with the glorification of Ethiopia. However, Wosene does not want to display this overtly. Instead, through his seemingly effortlessly distributions of alphabet, words and phrases on canvas, he creates a visual poetry concerning the country, its people, and its culture. It is an ingenious type of communication directed toward his countrymen. Amharic words like culture, unity, identity, knowledge-- intricately decorate his canvas. Inscribing on his canvases the nation’s virtues with colorful and monumental words and phrases; he invites all Ethiopians to join him in the celebration. For example, In A Beauty of Your Own, we can read Amharic words, along with a phrase, “All Ethiopians are proud of their country.” His other painting, Berkeley III, again does not represent the city of the Berkeley. He is speaking of Ethiopian food, language, wax and gold tradition. The carefully chosen words and phrases, such as “country”, “unity”, “our flag”, “love of country”, ” identity”, “our pride”, and “Ethiopia” are inscribed again and again throughout his works. Their mystifying grander evokes a deep feeling of importance and melancholy, and discloses to the viewer a new kind of visual sensation and emotional realm. The Africans III is a heart-felt cry to protect Ethiopia-- from plunders and corruptions. The Abyssinians, unravels a bloody and burning sky-- an exodus, of biblical proportion, of the proud people of Abyssinia. Meaningful Amharic words haphazardly inscribed on the canvases, reading from left-to-right or top-to-bottom represents the millions of immigrants. One can immediately notice words and phrases such as “our pride”, “our identity" and “how beautiful are the alphabets of our country”. It appears that the entire history of the nation is inscribed on the canvas. The seemingly haphazard and flimsy-looking, but some heroically incised Amharic words and phrases (that can be read as the trace of history), are thought-provoking, poignant or even nostalgic. What Wosene desired is perfectly clear--the construction of a higher, poetic order of the Ethiopian alphabet, with aesthetic consideration, creating a picture that glorifies Ethiopia. The true picture of Ethiopia--her promise, her hope and her future, and what we thought have been lost forever--is in front of our eyes in Wosene’s Ethiopia. Wosene's Ethiopia is about unity, culture, faith, identity and the beauty and riches of Ethiopian alphabet. It captures and illuminates the mixed emotions of patriotism, with nostalgic color arrangement that makes the blood run and the heart thrill and beat faster in many. The ancient, with their talismanic letters and spellbinding inscriptions were able to heal and protect the believers. The modern incorporates their writings, poetry and music, constantly swaying us to lament the condition of Emama Ethiopia. In the midst is the postmodernist work of Wosene. It somehow weaves its way into consciousness, inviting us to reconsider the beauty and the riches of Ethiopia. It is an uplifting and inspiring icon. If his work was song, if his work was poetry, all Ethiopians would have sung and read it out loud. This exhibition, which justifies the patriotism of Wosene, is appropriately titled My Ethiopia By: Esseye G Medhin, February 8, 2004