ACRYLIC ON CANVAS: Marxist modern / 2021 / 200 x 200 cm / MATERIAL: acrylic paint, canvas
Marxist modern
2020 - Ongoing
The project is about the 1960s Ethiopian Student Movement. Major Ethiopian political and social changes in the last six decades were highly influenced by intellectuals from the first University College of Addis Ababa (founded in 1950) later renamed, Haile Selassie I University (HSIU). Ethiopian university student’s political movement was one of the strongest in Africa and scarcely discussed by today’s generation compared to its contribution to contemporary political predicament based on ethnic identity, questions of revised cohesive national history, culture, - and the need for reexamining the meaning of Ethiopian itself.
Undoubtedly, the 1960s Ethiopian Student Movement was a major advent to a new Historical and political chapter. Although scholars have contested observations about the movement, some denounce its destructive outcome and others endorse the significance of redefining the state of Ethiopia once and for all. For instance, Mesay Kebede (2008) designate, the movement was prominently mounted on external radical ideologies and its destructive outcome on dislocating the cultural behavior of the country. However, Andreas Eshete´s (2012) observation indicated that the movement was not only the adoption of radical left political culture but rather, consider it as, a midwife for Ethiopian modernity.
The project assesses these contesting intellectual observations and historical materials to visually map and narrate the development and changes of the struggle between the late 1950s to mid-1970s both at home and abroad.
