BLACKBOX by Dawit Abebe: Solo exhibition

Dawit Abebe (b. 1978, Addis Ababa) is a contemporary Ethiopian artist who completed a multidisciplinary education at the Alle School of Fine Art and Design, where he trained in painting, sculpture, graphics, photography, and industrial design. This broad formation continues to shape an approach that moves fluidly across media while remaining anchored in a distinctly painterly sensibility. From the outset, his work has been driven by a sustained attentiveness to stories, fleeting moments, and the complex interplay of social, political, and human–technology interactions—whether constructive or destructive—which he reframes as open-ended questions. His artistic process unfolds as a form of critical inquiry, guided by intuition and experimentation, in which visual language becomes a tool to reflect on both individual perception and collective experience. Characterized by vibrant and often contrasting color palettes, his compositions combine formal dynamism with conceptual density, addressing themes such as environmental transformation, rapid urbanization, and the shifting, often ambiguous meanings of progress.

For Dawit, the black box transcends its technical definition and serves as both an epistemological and poetic tool. It acts as a metaphor for memory, representing it as a fragmented, mediated, and ever-evolving landscape. Rather than a stable repository of information, memory appears in his work as a constellation of visual, textual, and symbolic traces that surface and recede according to non-linear and often unpredictable logics. His paintings embody this condition through stratified surfaces in which figures, texts, and signs overlap, dissolve, and re-emerge, resisting any definitive or unified reading.

The human figure, while frequently present, never fully stabilizes into a fixed identity; instead, it emerges as the provisional outcome of intertwined processes of perception, recollection, and imagination. Embedded textual fragments—like pages, inscriptions, and residual marks—further emphasize the layered nature of experience, suggesting that the present is always constructed upon partially obscured histories that cannot be entirely retrieved or resolved. In parallel, recurring elements such as ornamental details, suspended forms, and especially barefoot figures serve as perceptual thresholds: they attract attention and prompt interpretation without exhausting the image's meaning, preserving its openness and polysemy.

In particular, the motif of bare feet, developed in more recent works, carries a dense network of cultural, historical, and symbolic resonances. It evokes notions of autonomy, resistance, and rootedness while also suggesting a direct, unmediated relationship between body, ground, and history. These references, while sometimes recalling specific figures or events, never resolve into simple illustration; rather, they function as latent presences embedded within the pictorial field, contributing to a broader reflection on identity and memory. Across his practice, Abebe approaches subjectivity itself as a kind of black box—an opaque and complex system in which thoughts, emotions, and experiences accumulate without ever becoming fully accessible or coherent. Rather than resolving this opacity, Abebe embraces it as a generative condition, constructing layered and fragmented images that resist fixed interpretation. His paintings operate as open systems in which memory, history, and the body remain in constant transformation.

Dawit is currently participating in the residency program at AKKA Project Venezia. The outcome of his research will be presented in a solo show on June 18, 2026.