See Great Art | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

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Meron Engida Hawke shares Ethiopia in Washington, D.C.

BY CHADD SCOTT POSTED ON MAY 12, 20230 COMMENTS

Meron Engida Hawke, Ashenda girl 4, 2023. 16 x 16 in. Acrylic, woven cotton fabric, yarn and pearl on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Morton Fine Art presents ‘Hummingbird,’ an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series “Teff Teffa,” “Ashenda Girl” and “Highlander,” alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalization and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia. The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, Hummingbird, will be on view from May 16 – June 9, 2023 at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. location (52 O St NW #302).

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa.

Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Meron Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another.

Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colors and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa.

Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas—an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials.

Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls—part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

In the artist’s “Teff Teffa” series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost”—a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity.

Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Meron Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the miniscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming—a newly inedible cash crop for the region—dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

Meron Engida Hawke, Highlander 2, 2023. 81 x 47 in. Acrylic, woven cotton fabric, yarn and pearl on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her “Ashenda Girl” series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colorful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewelry and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance—an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

The exhibition’s title, Hummingbird, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps. Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerizing compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

About the Artist

Meron Engida Hawke (b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) creates vibrant tableaus that act as a vehicle for exploring the artist’s personal experiences and Ethiopian cultural identity. Through trust in the mark-making process, Engida has developed a rich visual vocabulary that draws influence from the colors and narratives of ancient Ethiopian art.

At the intersections of abstraction and figuration, Engida’s works center a cast of expressive figures who together tell stories of vulnerability, empowerment, and resilience. Fusing memory and imagination, Engida layers tones, symbols and motifs to construct emotive scenes intended to prompt dialogue about migration, diversity and women’s experiences.

Eigda Hawke holds a BFA in Fine Art from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design. She currently lives and works in Washington, DC.

Morton Fine Art

Founded in 2010 in Washington D.C. by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice.

Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African and Global Diaspora.

Available artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | The Washington Post

ART

In the galleries: Artists imagine red in images from brutal to banal

Also: Honoring Japan’s creative culture and craftsmanship, an inventive exhibit allows viewers to be hands-on collaborators and engage with the objects on display, and an artist explores her Ethiopian identity.

Review by Mark Jenkins

May 26, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Meron Engida Hawke

“Ashenda Girl 3” by Meron Engida Hawke in her exhibit “Hummingbird.” (Meron Engida Hawke and Morton Fine Art)

Painter-collagist Meron Engida Hawke lives in D.C., but her pictures convey viewers to her birthplace, Ethiopia. Rendered in a flat, naive style that emulates her original homeland’s aged murals, the works in Engida Hawke’s Morton Fine Art exhibition portray women, children, animals and a traditional agrarian lifestyle where little things matter. Those include teff, the traditional grain whose individual grains are minuscule, and the tiny creature for which the show is named, “Hummingbird.”

Printed pictures of those birds, invoking a fable about their brave attempt to fight a fire with mere drops of water, are collaged into paintings made with acrylics and oilstick. Also incorporated are yarn, fabric, imitation pearls, rock-patterned wallpaper and — in two small sculptures — teff stalks that mimic human hair. The artist’s fresco-like style is functional yet poetic, much like the activities it is used to depict. Whether the subject is a noble lion, long a symbol of Ethiopia, or a humble gristmill, Engida Hawke’s pictures possess a strong sense of place.

Meron Engida Hawke: Hummingbird Through June 9 at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St. NW, No. 302. By appointment.

Available artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

ADIA MILLETT | A Women’s Thing | Morton Fine Art | Future Fair

FUTURE FAIR

Mixed-media artist Adia Millett removes, cuts and sews to unfold stories

May 22, 2023 by A Women’s Thing

PORTRAIT OF ADIA MILLETT. RIGHT: BLACK MOON, 2020 30.5 X 30.5 IN. COTTON, UPHOLSTERY FABRIC, SILK. COURTESY OF ADIA MILLET.

Adia Millett is a mixed-media artist who probes the intersections of identity, history, and interconnectivity with a range of experimental techniques. She employs textiles, sculpture, paintings, wood and glass as mediums to craft works that reveal stories of impermanence. Millett’s works are composed of abstract geometric shapes that evoke movement and transformation. She juxtaposes forms that expand and collapse against glittery backgrounds and hint at landscape and structural elements, such as rooftops, windows, and doors. 

Her paintings reflect the dynamic and complex nature of personal identity and its relation to the environment. Millett’s textiles challenge the conventional boundaries of quilt-making by stitching together culturally diverse fabrics. Millett also incorporates historical iconography into her quilts, honoring the past while inviting the viewer to contemplate renewal. 

Adia Millett holds a BFA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from the California Institute of Arts. She has shown her work at prominent institutions such as the New Museum and P.S. 1 in New York and is currently based in Oakland, California. 

We spoke with Millett about the works she presented the week before last at Future Fair 2023 in New York City, her views on AI art, and her upcoming projects.

---

Can you tell us about the pieces you were showing at Future Fair this year?

‘Black Moon’ and ‘Gold Moon’ were actually part of an older piece titled ‘Beneath You,’ which was a collection of culturally diverse fabrics. I cut that piece apart (something I often do). Structurally I wanted to take the square grid apart and construct something more organic. The process felt like I was channeling the moon as she gave birth to the embryo forms, ‘Black Moon’ and ‘Gold Moon.’

GOLD MOON, 2020 30.5 X 30.5 IN. COTTON, UPHOLSTERY FABRIC, SILK. RIGHT: DETAIL.

GOLD ROOF, 2019 40 X 30 IN. ACRYLIC, GOLD LEAF, WOOD AND PLASTIC ON WOOD PANEL. RIGHT: DETAIL.

What inspires you to create?

I’m inspired by transitions, change in everything … nature, perspective of ourselves and the people around us. I’m inspired by our connection to our ancestors we’ve never met and our ability to reinvent truth. I’m inspired by how each unique thing, person, idea connects to every other thing, person or idea. 

You share the process of your work extensively in videos on Instagram and on your website. What inspires you to show more of the background that goes into your work? 

So much art today is not actually fabricated by the artist themselves. They come up with an idea and have someone else make it. The labor, the craft is where we as artists become conduits to spirit, to intuition, to the beauty that lies in imperfection and happenstance. The process is also showing a parallel to how I think we should live. We should be willing to create who we are and then take ourselves apart and create a more expansive bolder version of ourselves.

What do you think of AI art where a human creates a prompt for the AI to generate an image? Do you think this new medium is authentic and valuable?

Is anything really authentic? Everything derives from something else and AI is a very obvious example of that. I think AI art holds value in that it is a signifier of our time and it will continue to evolve. When I think about the artwork I’m drawn to, it’s work that is created by human hands, work that asks the viewer to use their imagination and emotional intelligence to identify with the content of the piece.

SO MUCH ART TODAY IS NOT ACTUALLY FABRICATED BY THE ARTIST THEMSELVES. THEY COME UP WITH AN IDEA AND HAVE SOMEONE ELSE MAKE IT. THE LABOR, THE CRAFT IS WHERE WE AS ARTISTS BECOME CONDUITS TO SPIRIT, TO INTUITION, TO THE BEAUTY THAT LIES IN IMPERFECTION AND HAPPENSTANCE.

If you could give your past self one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Don’t be quiet. Take every rejection as a learning opportunity. If someone is underestimating your value, say no and ask for what you want. Be in your Power.

If you weren’t an artist, what would you do? 

I tried being the other things and I realized being an artist is everything I want to be.

Tell us about your next big project.

I’m currently working on an upcoming exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art in San Jose. This show is inspired by an incredible collection of quilts from the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive. The show tells a visual story of the parallels between ancient warriors and crafts women. In collaboration with dancers, sound healers, quilters and crafters I will be showing new painting, textiles, sculpture and glass work.

Available Artwork by ADIA MILLETT

LIZ TRAN | Hilltop Elementary Mural | My Edmonds News

Art Beat feature: Hilltop Elementary unveils a mural of belonging

Posted: May 18, 2023

Principal Melissa Somoza and artist Liz Tran posing by their new mural with the Hilltop Student Council.

“This is the first time we have ever done an outside assembly,” Hilltop Elementary Principal Melissa Somoza told the sea of waiting students. “Hopefully, you know why you’re here today, this started because of you.”

The courtyard at the Lynnwood school was full of students, staff and representatives from the Edmonds School District gathered for an unveiling of a mural that was created in partnership with community grants, donations and PTSA funds.

The Hilltop Mural Club unveiling the mural.

Part of the school’s writing curriculum involves sending letters to Somoza on what students think could be different. In multiple letters, students asked to create a mural.

When the school decided to go ahead with the mural project, Somoza reached out to Tran over social media. Somoza saw local artist Liz Tran’s art in an Edmonds gallery years ago and fell in love with her style. “I’ve always thought ‘this is such kid-friendly art,’” she said. “It’s imperfect, its bright colors, every piece is unique. All the things that would make kids feel successful in art.” When she reached out, she thought, “there’s no way. She’s going to say no, but then she said yes! She’s been amazing. It has been an amazing experience and has brought our kids confidence as artists and in feeling a part of something.”

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Liz Tran and Melissa Somoza

Tran truly seems in her element with the students. She has worked with student artists before, but it was her first time helping children with a mural. “Working with kids is more fun,” she said. “They’re really creative and open and very honest. As adults we filter ourselves a lot, both creatively and in every way as a society. Kids don’t have that quite yet. There is a lack of self judgment.”

The mural

Tran says of the mural’s design: “We went with a tree. I have a strong connection to trees and the kids have a connection to trees, too. I mean, we’re from the Pacific Northwest. The tree represents Hilltop and the branches represent students.” Five hundred-plus students participated. She had each student artist paint a wooden circle with a design that represents themselves. Across the bottom, Tran added the words “We Belong at HIlltop,” which captures the school’s theme for the year, “Belonging.” The final product also includes a sound element from sonic architectural firm Memory is a Game. The firm incorporated audio from students as they created the mural to capture their thinking throughout the process.

“We Belong at Hilltop”

The school put together a mural club of students with an interest in art who also helped Tran paint the top of the tree. One student, fifth grader Violet Melllich, said she was drawn to participate in the mural club because “I like to do art on furniture. When I heard they were doing a mural club, I was like, ’oh my God I want to do it so bad.’”

Sixth grader Narayan Mitra wanted to join the mural club because “I have a huge passion about art. I really like to draw characters from games I’ve played. I just love to draw and make art, so I was really hyped about this. I was really glad when I joined. It was so much fun.”

Narayan went on to describe what he learned from the experience: “Being in more than other ways of art is really nice and really fun. And lots of other people can feel really connected to it.”

There certainly is a connection to the mural, beyond the students and teachers. There were many participants in the mural’s creation. Jennifer Blackstone, who is the school’s art docent, galvanized parent volunteers to help students paint their contributions. Additionally, the PTSA also provided support. Parent Julia Reynolds, whose daughter Jolie is a third grader at Hilltop, explained the PTSA’s involvement. “We had a grants program this year, so when Melissa brought this idea for a mural project with [Tran] we absolutely were right on board with it,” Reynolds said. “Our mission as a PTSA is to support the students and the community. This felt like an appropriate project to participate in, especially in supporting the arts.”

A closeup of some of the student circles.

With encouragement from Tran, who also fundraised for the project, the PTSA created an arts fund that will be used on a grant basis. Fundraising that is done beyond the cost of the mural will go into the arts fund. Readers who wish to donate can access the school’s PayPal here. Read more about the stages of the mural project on Hilltop’s smore page.

What’s next for Tran? She says the project “makes me want to teach, honestly. I’m thinking about programs in the future and replicating this. It’s so meaningful and has got to be the most rewarding project I’ve done, at least in a very long time.”

Melissa Samoza and Liz Tran, posing with the Hilltop Student Council

— By Elizabeth Murray

Photo by Brittany Gross

Elizabeth Murray is a freelance writer thankful to call Edmonds home. When she’s not busy wrangling her two kids (and husband), you can find her playing ukulele and singing with The Band LeLe.

Available artwork by LIZ TRAN

Martin Cid Magazine | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

Meron Engida Hawke in her studio, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Home / Art

New Paintings and Sculptures by Meron Engida Hawke Showcase Modern Ethiopia through Religious Tableaux

Festooned with flowers and animals imbued with symbolic weight, Engida Hawke’s new exhibition tells the story of market imperialism and feminist resilience in the artist’s homeland

by Art Martin Cid Magazine

May 18, 2023

 Art

Washington, D.C. – Morton Fine Art is pleased to present Hummingbird, an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series “Teff Teffa,” “Ashenda Girl” and “Highlander,” alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalization and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia. The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, Hummingbird will be on view from May 16 – June 9, 2023 at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. location (52 O St NW #302).

Thank God there is a river, 2021. 59 x 73 in. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke’s artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa. Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another.

Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Teff Mill 2, 2022. 48 x 81 in. Acrylic and wallpaper on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colors and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa. Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas—an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials. Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls—part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

In the artist’s “Teff Teffa” series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from

the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost”—a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity. Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the miniscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming—a newly inedible cash crop for the region—dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her “Ashenda Girl” series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colorful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewelry and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance—an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

Hummingbird, 2023. 70 x 50 in. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

The exhibition’s title, Hummingbird, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps. Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerizing compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

Meron Engida Hawke (b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) creates vibrant tableaus that act as a vehicle for exploring the artist’s personal experiences and Ethiopian cultural identity. Through trust in the mark-making process, Engida has developed a rich visual vocabulary that draws influence from the colors and narratives of ancient Ethiopian art. At the intersections of abstraction and figuration, Engida’s works center a cast of expressive figures who together tell stories of vulnerability, empowerment, and resilience. Fusing memory and imagination, Engida layers tones, symbols and motifs to construct emotive scenes intended to prompt dialogue about migration, diversity and women’s experiences. Eigda Hawke holds a BFA in Fine Art from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design. She currently lives and works in Washington, DC.

Morton Fine Art

Founded in 2010 in Washington D.C. by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh

ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a

welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African and Global Diaspora.

Morton Fine Art LLC

52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC 20001, United States

Available artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

Art Plugged | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

Meron Engida Hawke: Hummingbird

Exhibitions

Meron Engida Hawke: Hummingbird
May 16 – June 9, 2023
Morton Fine Art’s
Washington, D.C. location
(52 O St NW #302)

Hummingbird, an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series “Teff Teffa,” “Ashenda Girl” and “Highlander,” alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalization and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia.

The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, Hummingbird will be on view from May 16 – June 9, 2023 at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C. location (52 O St NW #302).

Meron Engida Hawke, Thank God there is a river
Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke’s artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa. Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another.

Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colors and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa. Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas—an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials.

Meron Engida Hawke, Teff Mill 2, 2022 48 x 82 in.
Acrylic and wallpaper on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls—part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

In the artist’s “Teff Teffa” series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost”—a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity.

Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the miniscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming—a newly inedible cash crop for the region—dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

Meron Engida Hawke, Untitled 1,
Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her “Ashenda Girl” series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colorful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewelry and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance—an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

The exhibition’s title, Hummingbird, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps.

Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerizing compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

https://www.instagram.com/meronengidahawke/

Learn more about: Hummingbird

©2023 Meron Engida Hawke

Available Artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

ArtAfrica | MERON ENGIDA HAWKE | Hummingbird

New paintings and sculptures by Meron Engida Hawke showcase modern Ethiopia through religious tableaux

EXHIBITION

11 May 2023

Festooned with flowers and animals imbued with symbolic weight, Engida Hawke’s new exhibition tells the story of market imperialism and feminist resilience in the artist’s homeland.

Meron Engida Hawke, Highlander 2, 2023. Acrylic, woven cotton fabric, yarn and pearl on canvas, 51 x 81 in.. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art.

Morton Fine Art is pleased to present Hummingbird, an exhibition of mixed-media paintings and sculptures by artist Meron Engida Hawke. Made up of works from the artist’s series ‘Teff Teffa’, ‘Ashenda Girl’ and ‘Highlander’, alongside still lifes in a muralist style, the exhibition tackles issues of migration, marginalisation and resistance in contemporary Ethiopia. The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, ‘Hummingbird’ will be on view from the 16th of May until the 9th of June, 2023, at Morton Fine Art’s Washington, D.C.

A native of Addis Ababa now living in D.C., Meron Engida Hawke’s artwork explores Ethiopian identity, sustainable agriculture, labor relations and women’s issues in contemporary East Africa. Struck by how the perception abroad of Ethiopia and Africa is consistently framed through media stories of famine, climate crises and war, Engida Hawke explores these issues from the inside, generating subjects in her work that are both archetypal and specific, each of whom embodies the perspective of Ethiopian womanhood while proudly acknowledging the gaze of another. Deftly weaving contemporary news items and personal interests into her portraits with a symbolist’s shorthand, the artist takes apart and rearranges stereotypical representations of Ethiopia while focusing on the beauty of the country’s traditions and cultures.

Heavily influenced by ancient Ethiopian art, Engida Hawke’s vibrant colours and crisp narrative subjects derive from the murals and religious paintings that populate the walls of Addis Ababa. Creating from memory and imagination and research into her subjects, the artist starts with a basic tableau that she gradually layers with tones, figures and symbolic metonyms. Her recent work involves the development of a mixed-media practice that layers Ethiopian woven fabric onto canvas – an innovation inspired by recent news of Ethiopian clothing being mass manufactured with synthetic materials. Engida Hawke’s inclusion of the handwoven fabric, as a testament to her heritage, shares pictorial space here with animals and pearls – part of the artist’s innate visual lexicon of innocence, forgiveness, elegance and justice. Weaving the weighted symbols of her native culture into increasingly disparate and secular works, Engida Hawke elaborates a narrative that telegraphs from the heart of Ethiopian identity into the cacophony of global media and international affairs.

Meron Engida Hawke, Teff Teffa 9, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 49 in. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art.

In the artist’s ‘Teff Teffa’ series, women practice the ancient rite of cultivating teff, a small grain used to make injera, the foundational flatbread of Ethiopian cuisine. The word teff comes from the Amharic teffa, meaning “lost” – a reference to the fact that the grain is so small that dropping one makes it impossible to find. Teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for more than 6,000 years, a staple food for over 80 ethnic groups in the region and central part of Ethiopian national identity. Today, teff has grown increasingly expensive to harvest and mill as a result of increasing global demand, as well as regional armed conflict and drought caused by climate change. Engida Hawke references the devastation of proverbial “lost teff” in her backgrounds, dotted with the minuscule seed, while in the foreground she addresses the social and environmental effects of flower farming – a newly inedible cash crop for the region – dependent on its export to Europe and the subservience of women’s labor across eastern Africa.

Meron Engida Hawke, Ashenda girl 4, 2023. Acrylic, woven cotton fabric, yarn and pearl on canvas, 16 x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art

By contrast, Engida Hawke showcases the underrepresented side of the Ethiopian experience in her ‘Ashenda Girl’ series by depicting women in moments of joy, freedom and righteous resistance. The series title references Ashenda, a colourful religious festival celebrated every August in northern Ethiopia by women and girls. Taking its name from a tall grass that is woven into skirts and worn for the duration of the three-day festival, the Ashenda girls also dress in traditional embroidered dresses, with fine jewellery and braided hair. The celebration is a joyous occasion of song and dance – an opportunity for the embrace of feminine self-expression.

The exhibition’s title, ‘Hummingbird’, comes from a story told by the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, in which a hummingbird shows bravery by fighting a forest fire with only the water that can fit in its beak. The other animals, much larger and more capable, watch with a sense of futility while their habitat burns, but the hummingbird knows that every little bit helps. Engida Hawke connects this story to her personal experience in addressing social and climate issues through her art, and has recently taken to including mixed-media hummingbirds in her mesmerising compositions of women like her, representing the freedom of empowerment through knowledge.

Meron Engida Hawke (b. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) creates vibrant tableaus that act as a vehicle for exploring the artist’s personal experiences and Ethiopian cultural identity. Through trust in the mark-making process, Engida has developed a rich visual vocabulary that draws influence from the colours and narratives of ancient Ethiopian art. At the intersections of abstraction and figuration, Engida’s works centre a cast of expressive figures who together tell stories of vulnerability, empowerment, and resilience. Fusing memory and imagination, Engida layers tones, symbols and motifs to construct emotive scenes intended to prompt dialogue about migration, diversity and women’s experiences. Enigda Hawke holds a BFA in Fine Art from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design. She currently lives and works in Washington, DC.

The exhibition will be on view from the 16th of May until the 9th of June, 2023. For more information, please visit Morton Fine Art.

Available Artwork by MERON ENGIDA HAWKE

The Art Newspaper | Future Fair | Eto Otitigbe | Adia Millett | Morton Fine Art

Abstraction is ascendant at New York’s Future Fair

The fair, a haven for fresh painting, may signal a coming shift in the market power dynamic between representation and abstraction

Benjamin Sutton

11 May 2023

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Visitors during Future Fair 2023’s VIP previewKeenon Perry

At the Future Fair, which opened to VIPs on Wednesday (10 May) for its third in-person edition, painting is without question the dominant medium. But what manner of painting—the bright, figurative style that has dominated the contemporary art market for the better part of a decade, or more process-driven abstraction—is up for debate. There are strong examples of both, and plenty of sculpture too, but amid the stands filled with canvases featuring popping portraits, irreverent domestic scenes and stylised art historical allusions, abstract works may invite closer inspection and more sustained interest.

“I’m excited for the pendulum to swing back to abstraction,” says Joey Piziali, the director and co-founder of San Francisco-based Romer Young Gallery, whose stand features works by an intergenerational cohort of “three women at the forefront of abstraction”, as he put it. The presentation spans a fluid and gestural circular canvas by Pamela Jorden, Bird’s Eye (2023), smaller untitled works by Nancy White with interlocking shapes rendered in a more muted palette, and a hard-edged geometric composition in blue and red pigmented plaster by Elise Ferguson priced at $24,000.

Elise Ferguson, Walsh L, 2023Courtesy the artist and Romer Young Gallery

“Abstraction is so generous, there’s nothing didactic about it,” Piziali says. “Whatever you’re seeing in the work, you’re bringing to it.”

On the stand of Washington, DC-based gallery Morton Fine Art, visitors might see ancient geometries or futuristic architectural schema in works by Eto Otitigbe. His pieces, on view alongside mixed media works by Adia Millett, are actually bas-relief sculptures in the guise of paintings. Each aluminium or Valchromat panel is engraved with a precise geometric structure related to Otitigbe’s public art practice, to which he then applies dyes or acrylic paint.

“I see these as experimental drawings,” the artist says. “They’re all about the push and pull between the rigidity of the engraving and then the way the ink moves across the panel, which I can’t completely control.” His works are priced between $2,750 for the smaller panels and $16,500 for the large diptych anchoring the stand.

Eto Otitigbe, Dr. Nova (diptych), 2022Courtesy the artist and Morton Fine Art

A different kind of push and pull is at work in the dazzling acrylic, gouache and ink works on paper by Rafael Plaisant filling the walls of New York-based High Noon gallery’s stand, which also features bewitching ceramic busts by Elisa Soliven. Plaisant’s abstract compositions toggle between ancient, contemporary and futuristic forms, evoking traditional scroll paintings and mandalas, Russian Constructivism, psychedelic poster art and science-fiction imagery, among other touchstones.

“Rafael’s practice started out as a fantasy of building the perfect skateboard ramp, which led him to study architecture,” says High Noon’s owner and director Jared Linge, who first discovered the Brazilian artist’s work at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic through the viral #ArtistSupportPledge social media campaign. “At the time his work was selling for $200, which felt like the wrong price.” At Future Fair, Plaisant’s work is still priced affordably, between $1,800 and $3,500 depending on size.

Rafael Plaisant, Proposito, 2023Courtesy the artist and High Noon, New York

“For a younger fair, Rebeca [Laliberte] and Rachel [Mijares Fick] really care about supporting galleries and showing work at accessible price points,” Linge adds, referring to Future Fair’s co-founders, who have made a supportive financial model and a cooperative spirit cornerstones of the fair.

The fair certainly seemed to benefit from being the first out of the gate amid New York’s spring art market marathon, hosting a buzzy preview the day before Tefaf New York and Independent, and before the auction houses kicked off their major seasonal sales. With 56 exhibitors, some of them sharing joint stands and others showing in lounge-like spaces or open thoroughfares, the fair has an inviting, unpretentious atmosphere that feels all the more welcoming given its location in the heart of Chelsea, a gallery district increasingly dominated by a couple dozen imposing international dealerships.

Or, as one VIP in line for the bar during Wednesday’s preview was overheard putting it: “I feel like Nada, Independent and Untitled had an orgy, and Future Fair is their lovechild.”

Available artwork by ETO OTITIGBE

Available artwork by ADIA MILLETT

ANDREI PETROV | The Washington Post

In the galleries: Landmark show lauds two iconic artists

Also: A multi-artist exhibit spans nearly a century of the Black experience in America; two artists deal with the war in Ukraine indirectly with personal and esoteric approaches.

Review by Mark Jenkins

April 28, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Leonets & Petrov

No signs of war are evident in Jaroslav Leonets’s and Andrei Petrov’s recent work, but their paintings respond to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Leonets’s landscapes depict a land of rustic beauty, barely touched by mankind but achingly vulnerable. Petrov’s landscape-influenced abstractions refer to an earlier period in the region’s history, yet were sparked by the Russian onslaught.

Leonets is a Kyiv resident who began painting rural Ukrainian scenes before the full-blown war began. His Amy Kaslow Gallery show, “Documenting Landscapes: Ukraine’s Vanishing Terrain,” features nine impressionistic oils made between 2019 and 2022. They’re painted primarily with sunny hues, yet with areas deepened by shadow. The majority of them feature bodies of water alluringly splashed with reflected light.

Andrei Petrov’s “Fugitive Sun,” in his exhibit “Footprints in the Snow.” (Andrei Petrov/Morton Fine Art)

Similar highlights characterize most of the oils in Petrov’s Morton Fine Art show. But as indicated by the show’s title, “Footprints in the Snow,” the reflections play on white fields rather than blue lakes or rivers. Petrov is a D.C.-born New Yorker whose suite of pictures was inspired by his grandfather’s 1915 escape from a Siberian labor camp, a flight that took him to China and eventually the United States. Petrov is partly of Ukrainian heritage, and the Russian assault motivated him to revisit this chapter in his family history.

Both artists apply pigment thickly, but after that, their methods diverge. Leonets’s technique is as traditional as his imagery; clouds and cliffs alike are rendered with thick but loose gestures. Petrov applies layers of color that he then cracks and partly removes. Many of his pictures are defined by fissures that suggest the collision of tectonic plates. This signature move is visually striking, but also thematically suggestive: The fractures suggest breaks in the timeline or lives shattered by history. Where Leonets’s landscapes appear pretty but threatened, Petrov’s abstractions conjure centuries of ruin and loss.

Jaroslav Leonets: Documenting Landscapes: Ukraine’s Vanishing Terrain Through May 7 at Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda.

Andrei Petrov: Footprints in the Snow Through May 7 at Morton Fine Art, 52 O St. NW, No. 302.0Comments

KATHERINE HATTAM | National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

ARTIST PAINTING

KATHERINE HATTAM

Free entry

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square
Level 2

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Katherine Hattam
(b. 1950, Wurundjeri Country / Melbourne. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Katherine Hattam works across painting, drawing, collage, printmaking and sculpture, with her practice frequently interrogating language, particularly the written word, as well as dialects of domesticity, family and the self.

Two-sided and suspended in space, Our list, 2020, continues Hattam’s practice of infusing her works with the objects and influences that have shaped her. Recent works, including this one, have been created in response to Philip Guston’s 1973 painting Pantheon, in which Guston listed a personal canon of European male painters. In Our list, Hattam rewrites the record with a new list resulting from a survey of 200 peers regarding their favourite women artists – Australian and international, living and dead. Reflecting on these works in an essay for the 2020 exhibition Katherine Hattam: The Landscape of Language, Dr Anne Norton writes:

Hattam’s Pantheon is collaborative where Guston’s was individual, and though hers refuses his implicit universalism, hers is larger, encompassing more kinds of work, more spaces, peoples and cultures. Guston’s was an avowal, it sought to settle. Hattam’s is unsettling. Guston’s list is an answer, Hattam’s list questions … Hattam reminds us of the people we do not know, the work we missed, of rents and wounds, elisions and concealments.

Hattam held her first exhibition in 1978 at Melbourne’s Ewing and George Paton Gallery, alongside Helen Frankenthaler, and has exhibited regularly ever since. Her work is held in most of Australia’s major public collections, including those of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Deakin and La Trobe Universities, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Monash University of Modern Art, and Bendigo Art Gallery, as well as in private and corporate collections including George Patterson, Minter Ellison, National Bank of Australia, Potter Warburg, Smorgon, the Darling Foundation and RACV. She has won the Banyule and Robert Jacks drawing prizes, and has been shortlisted in the Sulman Prize, the Dobell Drawing Prize, the National Works on Paper prize, and the Arthur Guy and Geelong Gallery painting prizes. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in literature and politics from the University of Melbourne (1974), an Master of Fine Art (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts (1992) and a PhD from Deakin University (2004).

Contact Morton Fine Art for additional information and acquisition of KATHERINE HATTAM’s “My Blue Pantheon” (see image below). http://www.mortonfineart.com

Available artwork by KATHERINE HATTAM