1. INSPIRED
WOMEN
had a sister of equal talent, her skills would die unacknowledged
and unexpressed as a result of her gender and its attendant societal
constraints. Woolf writes:
“Meanwhile [Shakespeare’s] extraordinarily gifted sister, let us
suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imagina-
tive, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to
school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone
of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then,
one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her
parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the
stew and not moon about with books and papers…
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman
possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a
very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on
the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and
inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains
out on the moor or moped and mowed about the highways crazed
with the torture that her gift had put her to.”
Transplanting Woolf’s claim into the present, is the same true
for women artists operating in current-day Ethiopia? Instead of
a playwright, in this instance, Shakespeare’s sister could be an
artist, perhaps a painter or a photographer. Do the same societal
constrains apply to women in a different time and place? Are the
circumstances faced by women artists inherently different from
those faced by men?
These questions flitted through my mind as I attended the closing
ceremony of the Ethiopian Contemporary Art Gallery’s (ECAG)
latest art exhibition at the Radisson Blu, organized by Zeriun Sey-
oumand Nuru Abegaz. The show featured over thirty women art-
ists, the vast majority of whom are based in Ethiopia, and was
appropriately titled “Inspired Women.”
When I first saw all the paintings and photographs side-by-side
weeks earlier in the ECAG space in the Laphto Center in Old Air-
port, I didn’t find it odd that there would be an exhibition of only
women artists. Instead, I strolled around and familiarized myself
with the art on display. I lingered over Marta Mengstu’s “Coffee
very woman needs an income and a
room of her own in order to create. That
is Virginia Woolf’s argument in her essay,
“A Room of One’s Own.” Woolf, a lead-
ing 20th century female novelist, essayist,
and feminist postulates that if Shakespeare
by Rebecca Emiru
Ceremony” whose graceful blue ladies seem at once alien and hu-
man, their improbably long arms and serene faces simultaneously
peculiar and commonplace.
But on the night of the closing, all I could think was, “Why? Why
did the organizers decide to only feature women artists? Does this
imply something special about the way women artists are treated?
Is their art inherently different? Different from whom? Are there
any all-male exhibitions? How come the organizers of this event
are both men?”
According to Zerihun, he and Nuru wanted to make this group
exhibition different from ones they had seen in the past. As active
artists, both Zerihun and Nuru have a wide, pre-existing network
of former fellow students, colleagues and friends who are women.
The feeling that these talented members of the art community did
not receive the amount of exposure they deserved gave birth to
“Inspired Women.”
Zerihun also added that the vision of ECAG was to support and
complement artists in this country. While there is a role for cul-
tural institutions and NGOs in promoting and cultivating art, he
insisted that there also ought to be significant participation from
homegrown collectives and organizations as well.
The position of the organizers of this exhibit as friends, colleagues,
contemporaries, and equals of the artists on display mitigated my
initial suspicion as to why men would curate an all-female exhibi-
tion. I learned that this was not an arbitrary project but the fruit of
observations of and interactions with women artists.
E

2. The Ethiopian Contemporary
Art Gallery in the Laphto
Center.
The Artists
No one is better suited to discuss what it means and feels to be
a woman and an artist in Ethiopia today than the women artists
themselves. I spoke to four. Here is what they had to say:
Desta Hagos
Internationally known and popularly acclaimed Ethiopian fine art-
ist Desta Hagos, who studied under Gebre-Kristos Desta is cel-
ebrated and respected not only for her talent but for being a pio-
neer in a field once reserved as male domain. She has participated
in over forty-seven shows throughout the world and has a well-
deserved reputation as a gifted artist. When I asked her how she
became a professional artist, she told me that she never struggled
with the decision. “I always knew I wanted to become an artist.
When I was a young girl in school, one of my works was submit-
ted to an international competition and I won, so I knew from early
on.” She recalled how so very few other women were admitted to
art school in her day and how even fewer made it to graduation. In
contrast, she looks around the room, surrounded by the works of
fellow female artists and tells me, “Things are different now.” To
aspiring young women artist, she says, “Be true. Be true to your-
self and your art always. Never give up in your pursuit, even if you
are discouraged. Don’t give up.”
Elsabeth Habtewold
Elsabeth produced a multi-media presentation for this exhibi-
tion. It is an 80 second looped video composed of multiple layers
and animation. The top-most layer consists of a continuous white
line that assembles itself in a complicated pattern. As the line as-
sembles, parts of it become grey; they break off and float off the
screen. The video, aptly titled “Regeneration,” demonstrates the
intertwined cycles of life and death. Elsabeth says she was initially
bothered by a disturbing article about the trend of sniffingglue, and
that this idea later developed into “Regeneration.” When I asked
her what she thought of women’s place in the art community in
Ethiopia, she said, “In numbers, the women are fewer, but in talent
they are equal to men.”
Konjit Seyoum
Konjit Seyoum is an artist, curator, conference interpreter and
owner of ASNI Gallery, which she founded in 1996. A self-taught
artist, she is presently working with photo-based media. For this
exhibition, she created “YehewanNeger”, which can be translate-
das “Eve’s Affairs.” It is composed of a series of photographs that
started with an actual drawing and evolved into fragments of im-
ages exploring issues of gender, identity, desire and mystification.
“I thought it would relate well to the theme of the exhibition as
well as to the venue where it was displayed, the Laphto Center,
because it has retail shops on the lower floors,” says Konjit.
When asked about participating in a show that only exhibited
women, she replied that had she not known the organizers so well,
and if the organizing entity had been different, she would have
hesitated to take part.As it is, she has a very high regard to Zerihun
and Nuru. “Usually, if it’s an outside entity that is organizing an
all women show, they mean to display all female, African art.” It is
this spectacle that she believes the ECAG has avoided so artfully.
Roshan Linsi
Roshan appreciated the opportunity to meet so many fellow artists
at the show. “The good thing is that you get to see as an artists, a lot
of other artists whose works you’ve never seen before, or you’ve

3. never met before. I didn’t expect it to be like this, quite frank-
ly. So many women artists in Addis came out to display their
work.” Reflecting on the past four years, Roshan remembers
that there are not many female artists who exhibit on a regular
basis. Asked why, she responds, “I think maybe one of the rea-
sons is they are submitted to different pressures…raising chil-
dren, or providing an income if it’s a double-income family, or
if you come from a more traditional family. But even if you’re
not in a traditional family, you often have to participate. A man
does not. I know a lot of men artists who live at home and get
catered to; they don’t have to participate, so they can pursue
and develop their art. But for women artists to live with their
family and want to do that is absolutely out of the question. It’s
also more discouraging for women to try to be artists living off
their art. It is much more difficult than for male artists, which is
difficult enough as it is.”
We then discussed what was different about the classification
of women artists as separate from the greater community. “You
know, I normally don’t like the classification of female artists
or female art. It’s like what they used to do with the African art
or Primitive art. It’s a classification, which usually implies that
there is fine art and then the sub-category. And there is always
a little bit of flavor as if those who are put in that category are
not going to be measured or judged by the same standard, and
that’s an aspect I don’t usually appreciate or like. But I think in
the context of this exhibition, it’s a bit different because the idea
was not just to say, ‘Yeah, let’s show what women can do.’ but
the idea was more like, ‘There are a lot of women here, let them
come together and interact, and maybe find a way to encourage
each other’s growth.”
I left the Radisson with a lot to think about that night, but one
thing I knew for sure was that Shakespeare’s sister does not live
in Ethiopia today. Yes, there are certainly considerable difficul-
ties that women artist face here, but there is also a growing,
supportive community of artists and art-lovers, both male and
female. Yesterday’s trailblazers paved the way for the creators
of today and tomorrow.