Untitled LXXIII, 2021

Acrylic on canvas
© Merikokeb Berhanu; courtesy of Addis Fine Art. Photo by Andrea Avezzù; courtesy of Addis Fine Art.

For Merikokeb Berhanu, painting reflects the cycles of life. “Every creation on earth, natural and inanimate, changes over time,” she says. “I have always used my art as an attempt to capture the feelings and emotions that have accompanied me throughout the different stages of my life.” Rather than documenting distinct moments in time or drawing on specific experiences, the Ethiopian artist situates her work in the space between the conscious and the unconscious. She navigates this liminal position through richly colored, abstract forms that are often predicated on real-­world sources. While recurring motifs, from flowers and fruit to the human body, have populated the artist’s large-­ scale paintings for the past two decades, a sense of ambiguity is nonetheless vital to her process, underlined by her proclivity to number her paintings but otherwise leave them untitled.