The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art presents ‘Tsedaye Makonnen—Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes’ which opened on the 13th of December 2024 and will remain on ongoing display. The exhibition features seven sculptures by Washington, D.C.-based Ethiopian American artist Tsedaye Makonnen, and it explores the invisibility and violence that Black women and their communities are often subjected to, finding connections in form and themes related to alternate depictions of the power of motherhood and sisterly solidarity. Makonnen’s seven light-tower sculptures at the center of the exhibition are made up of 50 boxes, each named after an individual lost to violence, enshrining their names with love as a form of comfort and solidarity, with a sense of hope for a different future. The artist speaks to a range of human rights issues and forms of oppression. Outside of Ethiopia, the DC metropolitan area has the largest Ethiopian diaspora so having Makonnen’s work exhibited at the Smithsonian is a powerful way to center stories of oppression and resilience while countering underrepresentation in the arts.
Makonnen envisioned the central installation in this exhibition titled ‘Senait & Nahom | ሰናይት :: እና :: ናሆም | The Peacemaker & The Comforter,’ while she was an artist in residence for the National Museum of African Art as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. The sculptures are in dialogue with artworks from across the Horn of Africa’s history drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. Makonnen worked with Smithsonian curator Kevin D. Dumouchelle to select the objects, which include examples of the types of Ethiopian Coptic crosses that directly informed the artist’s research and work. The objects also include related works by Ethiopian artists that express visions of motherhood and comfort, from medieval icons to works by contemporary artists such as Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian and Aïda Muluneh.
Tsedaye Makonnen is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is driven by Black feminist theory, firsthand site-specific research and ethical social practice techniques, which inform solo and collaborative site-sensitive performances, objects, installations and films. In 2021, her light sculptures were acquired by the National Museum of African Art for its permanent collection, and she published the book ‘Black Women as/and the Living Archive.’ In 2022, she was invited to perform at the Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh’s “Loophole of Retreat: Venice” and was Clark Art Institute’s Futures Fellow. Makonnen currently works on a permanent large-scale public art commission for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, to be unveiled in 2025. She has been working on the oral history project ‘Documenting the Ethiopian Communities of DC’ in collaboration with the Library of Congress and the DC Public Library. She lives between Washington, D.C., and London with her partner and children.
