Detroit Art Review – Page 2 – Critical art reviews of Detroit galleries and museums weekly

Heloisa Promfret @ N’Namdi Center for the Arts

On November 22, 2024

In Ceramic, Drawing, Installation, Paintings, Sculpture

Heloisa Pomfret, Installation image, and image of the artist in a black dress. All images courtesy of DAR

On November 1, 2024, the George N’Namdi Gallery opened a solo exhibition, “The Brain,” by Brazilian-American artist Heloisa Promfret. This collection of 45 artworks builds on her earlier work, including abstract paintings using the palimpsest process, where layers of paint are scratched into the surface, revealing further colors beneath. Despite lacking a specific context in contemporary art history, Pomfret’s work combines mysterious marks, multiple colors, and shapes executed on burlap, paper, and ceramic objects.

Helosia Pomfret, Untitled #7, Diptych 34 x 36″ 2024

Diptych, Untitled #7, displays a multicolored, organic, abstract composition in which the canvas is cut, re-arranged, and re-stitched. She says, “My work involves the transformation first from the idea of an impulse to scientific representation and measurement, and second, from scientific representation back to abstracted mark-making, color, texture, and re-purposed and re-constructed materials.” These plant-like shapes illustrate a new environment for the viewer to ponder.

Helosia Pomfret, Glimpse Series, #2, Oil on Stitched Canvas, 38 x 53″. 2024

In the painting Untitled #2, the artist confronts her audience with a wall of movement that contrasts these vertical panels against a sea of shapes and colors moving from right to left in the background. The small, dark shapes feel like microbes swimming over the scratched surfaces. It is a primitive dance, as energy, order, and chaos co-occur during the movement concert. Raised in Brazil and later relocated to Detroit for her study of art, one wonders if something in her South American DNA makes these compositions so unusually new and fresh.

Heloise Pomfret, Untitled # 6, Glimpse Series, 36×34″ 2024

The series of Mandala-like circular paintings located in the gallery provides a contrast to the horizontal compositions and flirts with the idea of scientific explosions on the planet. They are an entirely different kind of sensibility that occupies the artist’s conceptions, especially when making the transition from rectangle to circle.

She says in her statement, “My work involves the transformation first from the idea of an impulse to scientific representation and measurement, and second, from scientific representation back to abstracted mark-making, color, texture and re-purposed using re-constructed materials.” There is a mobile and versatile side of Heloise Pomfret’s work in the exhibition when you consider the paintings, the structures, and the ceramics.

Heloise Pomfret, Construction # 8, Burlap, oil, and Bamboo, 25 x 12″. 2024

In Bamboo, the relief construction uses oil to create a dark vertical grid that feels like something produced by native people of South America. Stitched onto burlap, it suggests some spiritual practice to this viewer. She says, “The philosophy of my work is about the energy, order, and chaos that occurs during psychological or physical stress, which serves as theoretical support to the mark-making and constructs of my work. The surface is often an analogy to the body and memory, in which experience occurs and is transformed.”

Heloise Pomfret, Clarity Series, Stoneware, 6 Pieces, 9×5″, 2023

It is not often that an artist whose primary work is two-dimensional will make drawings, prints, or photographs, but even less frequently will they create a ceramic body of work. Yet, in this exhibition, Heloisa Pomfret presents a series of 15 ceramic objects. Most are wall reliefs; she chooses stoneware with a black glaze to express her ideas. In the Clarity series, she scratches her motifs into the glaze, in keeping with the other bodies of work she has created for this exhibition.

Heloise Pomfret, Installation, small circular objects on plywood.

The work in this exhibition reflects the varied mediums and materials that Pomfret employs to explore her personal psychology in paintings, installations, and ceramic objects. A large piece of plywood displayed in the center of the gallery demonstrates yet another approach, reflecting the diversity of the artist’s aesthetic means. These circular stitched and scratched smaller pieces reflect the translation of her emotional impulses into physical form, “The Brain” is a delightful and multifarious collection of original objects, literally unlike anything this writer has seen.

Heloisa Pomfret is a Brazilian-American interdisciplinary visual artist. She earned an M.A. and an M.F.A in Painting/Drawing from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Casper Libero College in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The Helosia Pomfret’s exhibition is on display through the Christmas Holiday at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Detroit Michigan.

The Tyranny of Small Decisions @ Galerie Camille, Detroit, MI

By Dennis Nawrocki

On November 15, 2024

In Drawing, Installation, Mixed Media, Paintings

Galerie Camille, Exhibition – The Tyranny of Small Decisions Installation (photo by R Standfest)

Houses loom, and factories downsize at the Galerie Camille in a two-person exhibition of new work by Detroiters Jeanette Strezinski and Ryan Standfest. Enigmatically titled “The Tyranny of Small Decisions,” each artist homes in on a familiar structure redolent of domesticity, work, harmony, catastrophe, safety, loss, reminiscence, oppression, and so on. Entering the gallery, one quickly senses the heady frisson generated by the installation of diametrically divergent works on opposite walls. Stark differences in size and palette, from Strezinski’s monumental black and white paintings to Standfest’s small-scale, multicolored compositions of muted pink, magenta, blue, yellow, and green, draw the visitor back and forth across the space. Media differentiates the work of each artist as well: her tactile, mixed media surfaces (oil, stain, resin, fabric, and construction materials on canvas) and his nubby, textured acrylics on wood panels.

Jeanette Strezinski, Crevices, 2023, Oil paint, stain, resin, fabric, mixed media on canvas, 8 x 9 ft.

Strezinski’s outsize images might be described as documentaries of houses in evolving states of being. Initially, they appear abandoned and ruined, but in reality, several discernible structures overlap one another. In Crevices, at least three gables are superimposed and combined with an unfurnished room at the left. Perhaps renovation is underway with multiple options sketched in by an architect. Like other of her compositions on view, Crevices is built up through a layering of building materials that yield a scratchy, corrugated surface, while its evocative title implies a hint of danger lurking within.

Jeanette Strezinski, Come Home, 2024, Oil paint, stain, resin, fabric, mixed media on canvas, 7 x 7 ft.

Another sizable image on view is labeled Come Home, its titular overtones expressing a plea to return to the traditional, double-gabled house seemingly floating in space. Also visible, however, is a gridded skylight addition at right and deck at left that suggest remodeling and/or deconstruction, as well as an overlapping horizontal ranch house stretched out at the bottom of the white outline that envelopes the artist’s centralized image.

Jeanette Strezinski, Leave The Light On, 2024, Oil paint, stain, resin, fabric, mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48 in.

Leave The Light On, a smaller canvas by Strezinski, is the darkest of her paintings, in which an illuminated window at left glows with yellow light. It alludes affectingly to other iterations of the title in songs and texts that likewise refer to a lighted window as a beacon of home, hope, human presence–or absence.

Ryan Standfest, A System of Love, 2024, acrylic on wood, 16 x 20 in. (photo by artist)

Unlike the frontal impact of Strezinski’s looming houses, Standfest’s modestly sized, framed, precisely rendered images on the other side of the gallery feature the factory as the potent focal image. Presented from a bird’s eye point of view, A System of Love depicts an industrial complex of identical structures topped with identical smokestacks rendered in magenta, pink, green, red, and blue. The tidy, rust-free environment is abuzz with blank speech balloons linking various buildings and workers therein. Are they textless because the workers have nothing to say to one another or because they uniformly echo the prescribed messages of an industrialist’s point of view?

Ryan Standfest, A Perfect Engine of Longing, 2024, acrylic on wood panel, 14 x 11 in. (photo by RD Rearick)

As the series develops, Standfest’s silent, anonymous factories are personified, enlarged, and activated, becoming engaged in capitalist machinations. In A Perfect Engine of Longing, the smokestack, like a dagger, pierces a green hillside, further despoiling the surrounding landscape of wizened shrubs and trees.

Ryan Standfest, A Personification of Romantic Fiction, 2024, acrylic on wood panel, 14 x 11 in. (photo by RD Rearick)

And in A Personification of Romantic Fiction, an agile, upside-down factory births another. The newborn, white-hued “infant,” devoid of a full complement of windows and doors like those of its green and blue factory “mother,” connotes the future. More such birthings will produce X number of manufacturing centers ad infinitum. In his artist’s statement, Standfest warns that these “terrible buildings manifest our capacity for creation and catastrophe.”

Ryan Standfest, Company n. 2, 2024, Mixed media, 14 x 9 x 5 in. (photo by RD Rearick)

Detail of Company n. 2, (photo by RD Rearick)

Standfest’s oeuvre also includes a series of miniaturized sculptures of industrial buildings, as in Company n. 2, one of four displayed in the show. Each is composed of a rectangular enclosure and tall exhaust element, appears to be abandoned, and exhibits worn, mottled surfaces of various hues, as in the black and rusty red patina of n. 2. One also discovers in the empty window and door apertures, tiny, prone figures, perhaps resting, exhausted, or comatose.

In short, Strezinski and Standfest’s fraught, complicated depictions of vital human habitats, such as homes and factories, address mutual concerns despite their quite distinctive styles of art. As Strezinski observes, in a statement pertinent to both, “My paintings represent dwellings designed for safety and comfort that eventually break down.”

“The Tyranny of Small Decisions” featuring Ryan Standfest and Jeanette Strezinski” remains on view at Galerie Camille through Nov. 29, 2024. The gallery is located at 4130 Cass Avenue in Midtown Detroit.

Echoes from the Rust @ Elaine L. Jacob Gallery

By K.A. Letts

On October 29, 2024

In Drawing, Installation, Mixed Media, Paintings

Echoes from the Rust @ Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University

“Echoes from the Rust,” Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Exhibition installation. All photos by K.A. Letts

It’s a tall order to ask a few to speak for the many, as these six artists from Detroit and Pittsburgh have been chosen to do in the exhibition “Echoes from the Rust,” on display at Elaine L. Jacob Gallery until January 10, 2025. The expansive theme of resilience in the face of hardship and of the importance of ethnic identity, immigration, labor, and location in the region’s artistic production could easily encompass the stories of 60 artists…or six hundred. But these half-dozen accomplished makers of images and objects, selected by independent curator Kemuel Benyehudah, describe as well as anyone can how midwestern values are shaped by personal experience, geographic displacement, and economic adversity.

Hubert Massey, Cityscape of Detroit, 1999, charcoal drawing on paper.

Narrative art enjoys exceptional credibility in the Midwest, where the ghosts of Thomas Hart Benton and Diego Rivera lurk in the consciousness of several of the exhibition’s artists. Eminent Detroit muralist Hubert Massey’s reverence for the craft of drawing is evident in the two semi-circular charcoal works on paper displayed on the gallery’s main floor. In these preparatory drawings for his frescos in the Detroit Athletic Club, carefully rendered architectural features of Detroit form a backdrop for monumental figures that would be at home in a depression-era WPA mural. N.E. Brown, of Pittsburgh, likewise traffics in the archetypal, with meticulously painted scenes of workers that range from the miniscule “Blue Collar” to “The Mill,” in which a masked and gloved worker rendered in burnt wood to graphically evokes the heat and dim light of an industrial environment.

N.E. Brown, Blue Collar, 2024, oil on canvas.

Like several other artists in the exhibition, Adnan Charara is an immigrant delivered in 1982 to Detroit by political upheaval in his native Sierra Leone. Charara’s family of Lebanese descent found a home in the Middle Eastern diaspora of Dearborn, while the artist himself found a vocation in fine art after completing his education in environmental studies and urban planning. Charara is that odd combination of a highly educated, yet self-taught, artist. Through his extensive self-guided studies, he has arrived at a style of expression that seamlessly combines a variety of art historical styles with his comic sensibility.

Adnan Charara, Unconscious, 2006, oil on canvas.

Charara’s three black and white silkscreen prints of workers, created in 2014, are reminiscent of Diego Rivera’s DIA murals, but represent less an homage to Rivera than Charara’s direct observations of industrial workers from the same source materials. Two large canvases, more typical of his current style, are wiggly, jittery masses of small figures crawling over and across a more-or-less undefined, yet urban, space. Hieronymous Bosch might recognize and approve of the anxious yet optimistic citizens of this no man’s land.

Omid Shekari, Is there a way Out, 2023, acrylic on industrial canvas.

Omid Shekari, another global transplant, arrives at the gallery from Iran by way of Pittsburgh. Displaced by the political upheavals in his native country, Shekari vividly remembers his experience as the victim of an oppressive regime, a past that continues to shape his art practice. He says, “My work looks at power and questions the levels of violence that it causes, as well as possibilities to resist such a phenomenon.”

Shekari’s musings on questions of political power and its oppressive use take form as imaginary architecture, metaphors for the cultural and political structures that imprison humanity. Seen as if from above, Body – Nation – State’s wall-mounted metal structure evokes a dream-like sense of displacement juxtaposed with a brutal reminder of human vulnerability. In the middle of this miniature built environment, a small piece of meat adds a jarring note of corporeality. Human fragility hangs suspended and displaced, surrounded by an edifice both shadowy and solid. The same aerial point of view shows up in Shekari’s painting Is There a Way Out, depicting a claustrophobic vision of a nation imprisoned. The same theme is revisited in his metal sculpture, Nation [government-bank-armed forces-prison] State, a seemingly impenetrable labyrinth for holding in –or keeping out–something. Is it information? Free thought? Free expression?

Halima Afi Cassells, Gold Cash Gold, 2024, paper cut.

Halima Afi Cassells views the state of the Midwest with guarded optimism through the lens of her deep cultural roots in the city of Detroit. Her carefully crafted paper cuts acknowledge the importance of technical mastery in a region known for making things. Three delicate artworks privilege the aesthetic over the political, but her strong social justice message is fully displayed in her 17-minute video, Detroit Future State. Composed of two parts, Detroit Future State is a polemic in which the ideal is contrasted with the real. In the first part of the video, an elegantly clothed and coiffed Cassells describes a utopian Detroit future as if it has already come to pass, with community gardens, abundant housing, and adequate healthcare. At the end of this blissful description, Cassell trades her fashionable costume for down-to-earth street clothes and delivers—in black and white–a wry description of things as they actually are in the city.

Josh Challen Ice, Held Together, 2024, plywood, plastic, construction lumber, ratchet strap, blue tape, inkjet print.

The exhibition’s underlying theme honors the importance of labor in defining the soul of the rustbelt, past and present. It finds its most elegant expression in constructions by Pittsburgh artist Joshua Challen Ice. Ice honors the value of beauty and the importance of craftsmanship in the making of things. He creates each object and installation, often from upcycled materials, with precision while leaving evidence of his labor in the form of clamps, stamps, and straps. His remarkable sculpture, Held Tight, is an impressive example; it replicates the shape of a strand of DNA beginning at ground level and traveling upward. Beautifully created in wood and wrapped around one of the gallery’s central pillars, the construct echoes the architecture of the spiral staircase nearby. Left on one of the crosspieces, as if by accident, is a workman’s jacket, a reminder that these unique and impressive objects are made by someone.

“Echoes from the Rust” is an exhibition in which superior technical and formal expertise serves the artists’ progressive vision. Each artist’s output reflects, in its own way, a shared ethic of hard work, craftsmanship, and social justice. There is an abiding optimism in the work that describes an often neglected part of America, brought together here in a celebration of resilience and grit.

“Echoes from the Rust,” Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Installation. Background: Hubert Massey Cityscape of Detroit, 1999, charcoal drawing on paper. Foreground: Josh Challen Ice, Absent Hands, 2024, construction lumber, ink stamp, concrete.

Echoes from the Rust @ Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, on display until January 10, 2025.

Lois Teicher @ Galerie Camille

By Michael Hodges

On October 13, 2024

In Drawing, Sculpture

Lois Teicher, Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape at the Galerie Camille

An installation shot of Lois Teicher – Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape, at Galerie Camille in Midtown Detroit, up through October 19. In the picture, Teicher is the one gesturing with her hands. (Photos courtesy of Galerie Camille, except where noted.)

Sculptor Lois Teicher has mastered the art of weightlessness, which is all the more challenging when working in steel and aluminum. Whether diminutive or huge, her curved, geometric forms in strong primary colors pose as delicately as dancers, high-wire acts often seeming to balance on one toe. In her new show at Detroit’s Galerie Camille, Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape, the eighty something artist who’s still working at full clip gives us a range of her small works, a couple of which echo her massive public sculptures in Detroit and elsewhere.

Lois Teicher, Curved Form with Rectangle and Space – ed 21, Aluminum.

The best example of that echo is Curved Form with Rectangle and Space – ed 21. The descriptive title pretty much sums it up — this is a narrow, concave rectangle, maybe 8 inches tall, balanced on one corner and leaning slightly to the left, with a tall, symmetrical hole cut slightly off center within the dark-blue metal. People who know Detroit well will experience a jolt of recognition, for this is the exact form – almost a tiny maquette – of Teicher’s 14-foot-high, white sculpture of the same name that’s the commanding centerpiece of the Hudson’s Art Park between the Scarab Club and John R Street, right behind the Detroit Institute of Arts. In his highly useful guide to the city’s public sculpture, Art in Detroit Public Places, critic Dennis Nawrocki notes that the opening cut in the work allows the viewer to see through, “subtly playing with negative and positive space.”

There’s something immensely satisfying and graceful about both pieces, small and large. In the case of the latter, which went up in 2000, the sculpture brings a stamp-sized pocket park alive that years ago had been nothing but a drab patch of grass. Students of Detroit urbanism won’t be surprised to learn that the park was the brainchild of urban planner Sue Mosey at the University Cultural Center Association (now Midtown Detroit Inc.), who in her 30-year career brought countless overlooked bits of Midtown back to vibrant life. In this case, Teicher’s sculpture delivers a striking grace note on a stretch of road that was in desperate need of it.

Galerie Camille director Marta Carvajal, who curated the show, praises Teicher’s gift for simplicity and “the unstable balance – she finds balance using the least amount of surface. Her mind,” Carvajal adds, “works on a different level than ours, with very sophisticated laws of physics.”

Lois Teicher, Curved Form with Rectangle and Space, Powder-coated stainless steel, 14 x 7 feet, 2000. (Photo: Detroit Art Review)

Teicher, who lives in Dearborn, graduated from Detroit’s Center for Creative Studies (now the College for Creative Studies) when she was 61, after raising her three children, and then went on to get her MFA at Eastern Michigan University. She currently maintains a studio in Eastern Market. Working with fabricators and engineers, Teicher has immersed herself in industrial processes that would scare off many, developing, as Maryann Wilkinson, former executive director of the Scarab Club wrote in Essay’d, “a unique style for large-scale sculpture that emphasizes tension and a suggestion of movement that serves to deny her work’s complexity and weight.”

That tension is equally present in the mostly diminutive work on display in Quiet Performance, like the 10-inch-high Dynamic, which stars a bowed crimson circle a bit like the rising sun on the Japanese flag, pleasingly perched at the far left edge of a convex white platform. It’s a graceful, beguiling orb – and one that’s echoed in Cosmos, one of a number of pencil-and-oil compositions framed on the wall, though it must be noted that in the case of Cosmos, the painted “sun” is rising out of a nebulous, sooty cloud.

Lois Teicher, Dynamic, Welded aluminum, 10.5 x 12 x 7 inches.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the artist just likes playing with elemental geometry, as with the mid-sized, dark-blue sculpture, Linked. Here Teicher gives us two flat circular discs intersecting at right angles, almost as if a circular buzz saw had made it halfway through a flat circle before stopping. Again, the composition is perfectly balanced on the two rims, yet also suggests imminent collapse, however unlikely.

Lois Teicher, Linked, Aluminum & enamel, 13.5 x 26 x 19 inches.

An undeniable touch of whimsy also permeates another of Teicher’s ink and oil compositions on the wall, Envelope Series 3 – a loosely rendered picture of two overlapping envelopes, each unsealed with the flap sticking straight up. There’s something about the concept’s lack of consequence – Really, a painting of envelopes? – that makes the conceit amusing. But there’s real visual interest here, too, in the way Teicher has turned the simplest of images into an affecting color study. An open business envelope seen from the back, of course, divides into five isosceles triangles — three very broad, and two quite narrow. In this work, the bottom of the top envelope is colored with deep crimson that edges over the lines, while its partly covered cousin is smoky black on the outside and a strong yellow within. The work is simultaneously oddball and charming.

Lois Teicher, Envelope Series 3, Ink, oil sticks, Bristol board, 14 x 16 inches.

Playfulness or capriciousness also seems to have been the leitmotif behind Teicher’s first big public commission in 1996, which is worth mentioning in any essay about the artist. Paper Airplane Series with Deep Groove was constructed for Flint’s Bishop International Airport. Three separate sheets of steel have been folded into the classic shape of childhood paper airplanes. The largest sits on the floor in the airport’s main terminal and is painted white with blue lines to perfectly mimic the sheet of school paper commonly employed for the purpose. There are even holes for the standard three-ring binder. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Lois Teicher, Paper Airplane Series with Deep Grove, Bishop International Airport, 1996.

Lois Teicher’s Quiet Performance: The Stillness of Shape is up at Galerie Camille in Midtown Detroit through October 19. The gallery will host an artist’s talk on October 18 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Ethiopia at the Crossroads @ Toledo Museum of Art

By K.A. Letts

On October 8, 2024

In Ceramic, Paintings, Photography, Prints, Sculpture

House of Yatreda (est. 2021), Abyssinian Queen, 2024, 1/1 NFT single-channel video. “Beneath the dense canopy of an ancient forest that divides her realm and blurs the line between history and legend, the Abyssinian queen journeys from one kingdom to another within historic Abyssinia, carried with solemn grace by her devoted attendants.” All photo images by K.A. Letts unless noted.

Ethiopia’s long history as an important but often overlooked center of world art is getting a sweeping survey in the Toledo Museum of Art’s newly opened exhibition, “Ethiopia at the Crossroads.” From now until November 10, images and objects from the horn of east Africa illustrate the region’s importance as a point of contact for trade and cultural exchange beginning in the 7^th Century BCE. Myths and stories derived from a wealth of sources, from indigenous religions to archaic Judaism to Byzantine Christianity and Islam, form the basis for a composite culture that is uniquely coherent and remarkably complex.

In antiquity, the Nile provided Ethiopia’s traders and envoys with access to Egypt and the civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea. Contact with the Byzantine empire brought eastern orthodox Christianity, which then developed, in conjunction with other local mythic influences, its own idiosyncratic religious identity. Ethiopia was only the second country—after Armenia–to adopt Christianity as its state religion in the 4^th century CE.

(l. to r.) Cross with St. Blaise, 10-11 c., copper alloy (Walters Art Museum), Processional Cross, 10 c. – 12 c., brass alloy, (Dallas Museum of Art), Processional Cross, 13 c. bronze, (Institute of Ethiopian Studies Abbas Ababa)

“Ethiopia at the Crossroads“ can be described as two exhibitions in one, actually. One collection of artworks, along with extensive photo documentation, centers on the country’s rich and lengthy art history. Another strand of the exhibition, woven seamlessly into the historical record, presents the work of contemporary Ethiopian artists and makes a convincing case that these living creatives are successfully carrying their unique cultural identity into the 21^st century.

After entering through the circular rotunda at the beginning of the exhibition, museum visitors will journey through a complex narrative of the region’s cultural patrimony that includes more than 225 artifacts stretching over 1750 years. Devotional painted icons, manuscripts, coins, textiles and basketry, metalwork and carved wood crosses of various scales from periods from 7 century BCE through the 19^th century CE form a beautiful and emotionally resonant parade that marches down the center of the main gallery. The exhibition design features a long, purpose-built terracotta-colored display structure that organizes what could easily be a baffling collection of diverse influences and objects. On the outer perimeter of the central structure, smaller groupings of objects amplify elements of Ethiopia’s long and complex story. Included in these collections are small, glazed black terracotta figurines characteristic of the Ethiopian Jewish community and wooden Waakaa memorial figurines from the Konso people of South Ethiopia. Illuminated manuscripts of both Christian and Islamic provenance are represented as well as magic healing scrolls that illustrate the hybrid beliefs characterizing Ethiopia’s Orthodox Christianity.

Folding Processional Icon in the Shape of a Fan, late 15 c., tempera with ink on parchment, wood handles, 24 ¼” x 154 1/8” x 4 ¾” (Walters Art Museum) photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The gallery holds a particularly rich trove of religious artifacts from the liturgical history of Ethiopia. A standout is the rare Folding Processional Icon in the Shape of a Fan, created in the late 15^th century and one of only 6 known to exist. Illustrating the influence of European artists in icon painting are two side-by-side pictures representing the Madonna and Child. The two paintings demonstrate how European religious tropes were routinely translated into Ethiopian visual language. One is by Ethiopian artist Fare Sayon (active 1445-1480,) and the other is from the workshop of Venetian Bartolomeo Vivarini (ca. 1485.) Using the vivid colors characteristic of the Ethiopian palette, Sayon makes the image his own by adding two flanking angels important in Ethiopian Christianity, Michael and Gabriel, and interpolates elaborate textile patterns into the figures’ garments.

(l. – r), Fare Sayon (Ethiopian) Diptych (right panel) Virgin Mary and Christ Child with Archangels Michael and Gabriel, ca. 1445-1480, glue tempera on panel Workshop of Bartolomeo Vivarini, Venice, Madonna and Child, egg tempera on panel.

The co-location of work by contemporary Ethiopian artists alongside historical artifacts demonstrates how a coherent identity based upon shared myths and traditions has persisted over time. Of particular interest is work by the House of Yatreda, a family-based artist collective now in a year-long residence at the Toledo Museum of Art. At the entrance to the exhibition, a large photo portrait (Mother of Menelik) minted on blockchain combines the traditional folklore of Ethiopia with web-3 technologies. The House of Yatreda’s leader, Kiye Tadele, poses as Makadda, the legendary Queen of Sheba, pregnant with Menelik, the offspring of King Solomon and founder of Ethiopia’s Solomonid dynasty. In a large gallery towards the back of the exhibition, a series of large-scale black and white single-channel videos by the House of Yatreda, entitled Abbysinian Queen, is on display. Described as “in the style of tizita (nostalgia or longing for the past),” the narrative follows the journey of an imaginary Ethiopian queen traveling through mystical forests to new kingdoms.

House of Yatreda (est. 2021), Mother of Menelik, 2023, NFT single channel video, photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The many creatives in the exhibition are a testament to the ongoing vibrancy of the region’s visual culture. Elias Sime of Addis Ababa, London-born Theo Eshetu, and Helina Metaferia of Washington, D.C., among many others, showcase the ongoing cultural significance of present-day Ethiopian art. Their work demonstrates that the artists share a strong stylistic correspondence between their art’s historical antecedents and their own work. Elias Sime’s Tightrope, Zooming (2012), now in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, is an elaborate longitudinal mosaic made from discarded elements of digital technology—circuit boards, computer keyboards, and the like. Helina Metaferia has created her version of a traditional metalwork crown that carries a meaning that is both royal and religious. With it, she honors Empress Taytu Betul, a national hero of the resistance against the invading Italian army in 1896. The traditional crown installed next to it shows, once again, the common sensibility that unites these artists with their patrimony.

Elias Sime, Tightrope, Zooming (2012), reclaimed electronic components and assorted small ephemera on panel, 83 ½” x 313” photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The abundant and varied collection of artifacts that makes up “Ethiopia at the Crossroads” is deserving of multiple visits, but if you can make only one trip, the beautifully illustrated and scholarly catalog of the exhibition is highly recommended and available from the Toledo Museum. Ethiopia at the Crossroads, edited by Christine Sciacca, is a comprehensive introduction to this neglected yet significant sub-section of world art history.

(l. – r.) Crown, 18-19 c., brass (Peabody Essex Museum) Helina Metaferia, Crown (Taytu) 2023, brass sculpture with etching (Toledo Museum of Art).

Ethiopia at the Crossroads @ Toledo Museum of Art, on display through November 10, 2024. https://toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/ethiopia-at-the-crossroads