Artist Tesfaye Urgessa: What Does It Mean to Belong?

“I was thinking about being a foreigner. I was thinking about what it means to belong.”

Tesfaye Urgessa makes history as the first artist to represent Ethiopia at the Venice Biennale. His participation comes at a time when the Biennale's theme, Foreigners Everywhere, resonates deeply with the themes explored in Urgessa's large figurative paintings as well as his personal experiences. As an artist who has navigated the complexities of identity, race, and the immigrant experience, Tesfaye Urgessa’s work engages with the emotional realities of displacement and cultural intersections.

Tesfaye Urgessa started his artistic journey in Ethiopia, where he would copy paintings from the church: “In Ethiopia, in the church, you see very bright, very strong paintings, and those are the kind of art I used to know at that time. I was copying them, and I taught myself how to draw and how to paint.” However, it wasn’t until Tesfaye Urgessa moved to Germany and enrolled in the Staatliche Akademie in Stuttgart that he decided to turn his talent for drawing into an artistic career.

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